Darfur: UN Humanitarian Convoys Come Under Attack

From the UN News Center

United Nations convoys bringing humanitarian assistance to war-torn South Darfur have come under attack by armed men in two separate incidents in recent days, a UN spokesperson said today.

A driver and two passengers suffered minor gunshot wounds when their truck was fired on yesterday while travelling in South Darfur, according to information relayed from the UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS). The injuries were not life-threatening and they were being treated in El Geneina hospital.

Over the weekend, another convoy of three UN trucks en route to Zalingei from Nyala, was ambushed by a group of armed men but it was not immediately clear what injuries were sustained in the attack.

Meanwhile, in West Darfur, UNMIS said it has received reports that about 500 Arab militia members, riding horses and camels and supported with Land Cruisers mounted with machine-guns, carried out attacks in several areas there. The African Union Mission in Sudan will investigate reports, the spokesman’s office said.

Darfur: Sudan, UN Clash Over Conditions

From VOA

The Sudanese Minister of Culture says the humanitarian situation in conflict-ridden Darfur is not as serious as it is usually painted in the media or by the United Nations. But U.N. aid agencies say they are not backing off from their grim assessment of conditions for civilians in Darfur.

Sudan Culture MInister Mohamed Yousif Abed Allah acknowledges conditions in Darfur are not great. But, he says the situation is far better than before.

For example, he notes infant and crude mortality rates are below the emergency level as set by the World Health Organization.

"This is a great success," he said. "The malnutrition rates also remain below the normal. In certain places, the malnutrition rates are higher in some parts of the Sudan, than in Darfur. Also, the area of providing clean water to the affected population in the camps was up 70 [percent] in certain areas and up to 65 percent in certain areas, which is the normal level of the capital of Sudan, of Khartoum."

The Sudanese minister says the situation is calm and peaceful in most of Darfur's 23 provinces and people there are leading normal lives. He says northern Darfur is the worst affected area.

Allah repeats his government's position that a U.N. peacekeeping force is both unnecessary and unacceptable. He says the African Union force is doing a good job in protecting security and should remain.

"We feel that African Union is doing fine and will continue to do well. The only problem it has is the resources. And we believe that the resources that could be provided for the U.N. peacekeeping forces should be provided for the African Union to carry out its activities," he said.

The World Food Program and U.N. Children's Fund have been providing humanitarian assistance to more than two million displaced people since the start of the Darfur conflict in 2003. They agree that aid agencies have managed to improve the nutritional situation of many of these people during the past two years.

But, WFP spokesman Simon Pluess, says it is extremely difficult for humanitarian agencies to work in Darfur.

He says some places are totally inaccessible.

"There were people who actually could not be served with food for about three months. So, you can imagine what this has as an impact on the nutritional situation of these people. So, the situation is far from being great," he said.

U.N. Human Rights spokesman, Jose Diaz, says reports by his office show the situation in Darfur is pretty awful and getting worse.

He said, "The situation where you have more than two million people displaced, where you have ongoing attacks against civilians, where you have women being raped and sexually assaulted regularly, where there is almost a generalized climate of impunity in relation to these human-rights violations, I think that speaks of a pretty dire situation."

Diaz says the African Union forces are doing a good job within their limited means, but he says a larger U.N. peacekeeping force should be sent to Darfur.

Darfur: UN Aid Workers Fear Worsening Access To Civilians

From the AP - via POTP

U.N. aid workers fear their precarious access to the suffering people in Darfur could get even worse, officials said Tuesday, despite a top Sudanese official saying most parts of the region were secure.

"Our biggest concern right now is that our hard-won gains could be easily lost if the situation continues," said Michael Bociurkiw of the U.N. Children's Fund.

The situation is "extremely difficult" for aid workers and "insecurity often prevents us from being able to access people," said Simon Pluess, a spokesman for the World Food Program. He said aid workers had been unable to get access to some 350,000 people in northern Darfur during September.

But Sudanese Culture Minister Mohammed Youssef Abdullah told a separate news conference the humanitarian situation wasn't that bad.

He said 14 of Darfur's 23 provinces were peaceful, with the south and west calmer than the north.

"We believe the security in Darfur is OK," he said.

Pluess told reporters that aid workers and the local population were constantly exposed to security threats, banditry and other criminal acts.

"The biggest victims are the civilians, the displaced, in Darfur who suffer almost on a daily basis from violations and attacks," Pluess added.

Abdullah, who was in Geneva to attend a cultural week organized by the Sudanese community, visited the U.N.'s European headquarters to talk to reporters. He conceded there was a problem if people were driven from their homes, but he said the main indicators of well-being - mortality and malnutrition rates, as well as the amount of clean water provided to the population - show the situation was normal.

"Mortality rates are below the threshold of an emergency situation," he said. The rate of access to clean water was "up to 65% in certain areas, which is the normal level of the capital of Sudan," he added. "And we believe this is a big success for all of us in the humanitarian process."

These indicators don't take into account sexual violence against women and children, the minister said when asked about widespread reported rapes of civilians.

Jennifer Pagonis, of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said violence and insecurity were severely hampering the aid workers' job.

"We have reduced access," she said. "Sometimes we just simply can't get out to (displacement) camps because of security constraints."

She added the agency's assessment of the humanitarian situation in Darfur wouldn't "tally with that of the Sudanese minister."

"It's very, very difficult for us," Pagonis said.

Darfur: Bush Hears Grim Report

From Reuters - related to the previous post

President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he heard a grim report about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the United States would work to come up with a plan to deal with it, but he offered few details.

Bush spoke after meeting Andrew Natsios, his new special envoy for Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes during a 3 1/2 year conflict that has spawned a severe humanitarian crisis.

The conflict has pitted mostly non-Arab rebels against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government and Janjaweed militia. All sides have been accused of grave human rights violations in the fighting.

"He came back with a grim report," Bush told reporters after meeting Natsios, who visited Sudan earlier this month. "He also understands we've got to do something about it."

The United States has been pressing Sudan without success to accept a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a U.N. peacekeeping force of roughly 22,000 military and police to restore security to the region.

Sudan has repeatedly refused to allow the peacekeepers to replace a 7,000-strong African Union force that is strapped for money and equipment and has been unable to maintain peace in Darfur.

"The United States is going to work with the international community to come up with a single plan on how to address this issue and save lives," Bush said. "The government of Sudan must understand that we're serious."

Bush provided no details on the plan other than to repeat U.S. calls for the deployment of a larger international force.

"One element of the plan is something that I strongly supported all along, and that there needs to be a credible and effective international force to go into Darfur to save lives," he said.

Darfur: Bush Warns Sudan to End Conflict

From the AP

President Bush warned Sudan's government on Tuesday that it must move soon to end the deadly conflict in its wartorn Darfur region.

Bush spoke to reporters after meeting with Andrew Natsios, the United States' special envoy to Sudan. Bush said Natsios delivered a "grim report about the human condition" in Darfur after a 10-day trip to the area.

"The government of Sudan must understand that we're serious, when you deliver a message to them on behalf of our government, that we're earnest and serious about their necessity to step up and work with the international community," the president said.

The vast, remote western province of Darfur has suffered from a 3-year-old war that has left some 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing brutal militiamen known as Janjaweed to quell a tribal rebellion against the government.

The U.N. has authorized 20,000 troops to replace an ill-equipped and underfunded force of 7,000 African Union troops in Darfur to enforce a peace agreement, which has not held. But the Sudanese government has rejected the U.N. force, and last week expelled the U.N.'s Sudan envoy, Jan Pronk.

Bush said a "credible and effective" international force is crucial to bringing peace to the region.

"The United States is going to work with the international community to come up with a single plan on how to address this issue and save lives," he said.

Chad/Darfur: Villages Hit by Echoes of Ethnic War Across Border

From the New York Times

The account Halima Sherif gave of her family’s ordeal was chillingly familiar in this part of the world. Arab men on horseback rode into her village, shouting racial epithets over the rat-tat-tat of Kalashnikov gunfire.

“They shouted ‘zurga,’ ” she said, an Arabic word for black that carries the connotation of a racial slur. “They told us they would take our land. They shot many people and burned our houses. We all ran away.”

Scenes like this one have been unfolding in the war-ravaged Darfur region of western Sudan for more than three years, and since the beginning of this year Sudanese Arabs have also been attacking Chadian villages just across Sudan’s porous border.

But the attacks on Djedidah and nine villages around it in early October took place not in Darfur, or even on Chad’s violent border with Sudan. It took place relatively deep inside Chad, about 60 miles from the border, a huge distance in a place with few roads, where most travel by horse, donkey or foot.

Beyond that, the attack was carried out not by Sudanese raiders from across the border but by Chadian Arabs, according to victims of the attack.

“They were our neighbors,” Ms. Sherif said, as she hurried to collect a few goats from the charred remains of her family compound. “We know them. They are Chadian.”

The violence in Darfur has been spilling over into Chad since at least early this year, when cross-border attacks by Sudanese bandits and militias chased more than 50,000 Chadians living in villages along the border from their homes.

But the violence around one of the other interior villages that was attacked, Kou Kou, is different and ominous, aid workers and analysts say. It appears to have been done by Chadian Arabs against non-Arab villages in Chad, and was apparently inspired by similar campaigns of violence by Sudanese Arab militias in Sudan. The villages are inhabited primarily by farmers from the Daju tribe.

“This is not a cross-border conflict — it is a local interethnic conflict,” said Musonda Shikinda, head of the United Nations refugee agency’s office in the area. “The perpetrators are their neighbors, not people from abroad.”

About 3,000 people have fled their homes because of the recent attacks, and about 100 have been killed, according to United Nations officials.

Accounts of the attacks from displaced people, most of them living in makeshift camps around Kou Kou, are strikingly similar to the accounts given by non-Arab Darfurian refugees of attacks on their villages by Darfur Arabs.

Yusuf Adif, a 29-year-old farmer from Djedidah, said he heard gunshots while tending his crops in early October. Mr. Adif was ready with a group of other village men to fight off the attackers.

Grabbing their traditional weapons — spears with hand-forged blades, bows with poison-tipped arrows — the men ran toward the gunfire. But they soon fled when they saw dozens of men on horseback with automatic rifles. Some wore white robes, like almost all Muslim men here do, while others wore khaki uniforms of a militia he could not identify, Mr. Adif said.

Abdel Karim Gamer, the sheik of Djimese, a nearby village, said that 20 people had been killed in the attack, among them women and children. Five women were abducted, he said, and he feared they had been raped, as so many women in Darfur have been.

“These are Arabs we know,” he said as he sat on a mat near the cobbled-together shelter where he and his family have been living for the past two weeks. “We trade with each other, depend on each other. We never had any problem in the past.”

[edit]

The latest violence here raises fears that Darfur’s troubles could ignite a broader conflict between nomadic Arab tribes and mostly settled non-Arab tribes across this broad swath of the sub-Saharan region.

If the racial and ethnic conflict that has infected Darfur is being copied by Chad’s Arabs, then the violence spreading beyond Darfur’s borders could presage even further regional conflict, said David Buchbinder, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes in Chad.

“The racial ideology is spreading, and that is very dangerous,” Mr. Buchbinder said.

Zachariah Ismael, who fled Ambash, one of the villages that was attacked, with his wife and six children, said of the conflict across the border, “Now it has come for us, too.”

He was building a bigger, sturdier shelter to replace the one he had constructed when they arrived two weeks earlier. His crop of maize and dura wheat would soon need to be harvested, but he despaired of being able to reach his fields, half a day’s walk away.

“I think we will be here for a long time,” he said. “We cannot go home.”

CAR: Gov't Calls for UN Peacekeepers After Rebel Attack

From VOA

The Central African Republic says armed forces crossed the border from Sudan and took control of the northern city of Birao Monday. The government is calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to the region. International concern is growing that violence in Sudan's Darfur region is spilling over into neighboring countries. Jordan Davis reports from VOA's regional bureau in Dakar.

Officials in the capital Bangui say rebel forces entered the city of Birao early morning Monday and took control of the city and its airport.

They say the attack caused both civilian and military casualties, but did not give specific numbers.

The city of Birao is situated approximately 50 kilometers from the Central African Republic's border with Sudan.

Government spokesman Cyriaque Gonda says the fighters who attacked Birao arrived from across the Sudanese border. Speaking from Bangui, he urged the United Nations to send peacekeepers to prevent future incursions.

U.N. officials presented a plans to the Security Council late last week to send peacekeepers to Chad and Central African Republic.

There has been growing concern in the region that rebels are using the war-torn Sudanese province of Darfur to launch attacks on neighboring countries.

The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced from eastern Chad and the northern Central African Republic.

The Central African Republic's Union of Republican Forces rebel movement is led by loyalists of former President Ange-Felix Patasse.

Patasse was overthrown by current president Francois Bozize three years ago. Over the past year the security situation in the Northern CAR has worsened with increasing roadside attacks that Bangui has blamed on the rebel movement.

From IRIN

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) has called on the international community to help it restore peace and order in its northern town of Birao. The town was captured by a rebel coalition calling itself the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement on Monday.

Cyriaque Gonda, spokesman for President Francois Bozize, said the appeal had been made to the security councils of the UN and the African Union (AU), the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, the Central African States Economic Community, France and other friendly organisations and countries.

In a statement broadcast on national radio on Monday, Gonda said the government suspected that the attackers who captured Birao came from neighbouring Sudan. Birao is a town of at least 30,000 inhabitants near the border between the two countries.

"We are not accusing Sudan of attacking the CAR, but we are wondering why such an attack may have come from a neighbouring and friendly country," Gonda said.

The Sudanese ambassador in the CAR capital, Bangui, could not be reached for comment on the allegation.

Birao lies on the major trade routes to Chad and Sudan. It is vital to the region’s commerce and is essential for the delivery of social services. Accessing the town from Bangui is only possible by air after the road network in the north was damaged after of several years of civil war.

Gonda appealed to the UN to implement the Security Council's Resolution 1706 on the deployment of UN troops to the border between CAR and Sudan to restore security.

The rebel group - believed to comprise three factions opposed to Bozize's leadership - attacked government soldiers stationed at Birao and captured the town.

"Many people, including soldiers and civilians, died as the result of the attack," Gonda said.

He added that serious damage to property also occurred during Monday's attack.

However, in a telephone interview on Tuesday, the spokesman of the rebel coalition, Abakar Saboune, said the group had no connection to Sudan. It is thought the coalition is mostly made up of former mercenaries and fighters who supported Bozize during his 2002-2003 rebellion, which led to him taking power in March 2003 from President Ange-Felix Patasse.

"We are operating from our territory and we have been controlling the northeast end since we arrived in Tiringulu in April this year," Saboune said.

[edit]

The government's accusation against Sudan complicates further the relations between the two countries. The CAR closed its border with Sudan in April after Chadian rebels coming from Sudan crossed its border to attack N'djamena, the Chadian capital. The CAR rebels allegedly helped their Chadian counterparts to attack N'djamena, hoping to get weapons in return for their support.

The latest attack on Birao occurred while Bozize and his prime minister were out of the country. Military officials said reinforcements had been sent to Birao.

Gonda claimed the armed attackers came from Sudan's Darfur region. A lieutenant in the CAR army, who declined to be named, said the attackers, numbering at least 300 men, were militarily well-equipped.

There are several armed groups operating near Birao. In April, aeroplanes, as yet still unidentified, landed in the Tiringulu to offload military equipment and personnel. Military officials in Bangui acknowledged that the armed men dropped into the region were still operating there.

In June, a rebel attack on an army position in Gordil, an area near Birao, left 13 soldiers dead.

The capture of Birao is a clear sign that rebel activity has reemerged in the country since Bozize took power. The town has an airport could be used to supply the rebels.

CAR: Govt Protests to Sudan Over Raid, Rebels Deny Bases in Sudan

From Reuters

Central African Republic has protested to Sudan about a cross-border attack by rebels who seized a northeastern town, the government said on Tuesday of the latest escalation of violence in the conflict-torn region.

Officials in the landlocked former French colony, one of the poorest nations on earth, said the armed group on Monday stormed Birao, more than 800 km (500 miles) northeast of the capital Bangui, after crossing from Sudan at Am Dafok on the border.

Central African Republic, like Chad, has in the past complained of being the victim of the spillover of violence from Sudan's western Darfur region, where political and ethnic conflict has raged since 2003.

A spokesman for the rebel coalition which claimed the capture of Birao, the UFDR, said its fighters controlled the town on Tuesday and were advancing towards Bangui.

The rebels accused President Francois Bozize of "holding the country hostage" and demanded he start talks about power sharing.

"We've taken up arms to restore justice ... we demand the creation of a round-table to debate the problems of the country," UFDR spokesman Capt. Abakar Sabone told Reuters by telephone. He said he was speaking from Birao.

Central African Republic's government summoned the Sudanese ambassador in Bangui on Monday to ask why the raiders had come from Sudanese territory.

"We condemn this barbarous attack, which came from the territory of a brother nation," presidency spokesman Cyriaque Gonda told Reuters on Tuesday.

"We're not accusing Sudan directly ... we're asking for explanations," he added, saying the government did not know the precise identity of the attackers.

In Paris, the French government expressed its support for Bozize's administration and said the attack showed the conflict in Darfur was affecting neighbouring countries.

"These events demonstrate once again the importance of including the Central African Republic in any thinking about solving the crisis in Darfur," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.

Gonda said Central African Republic's Prime Minister Elie Dote had on Monday asked the U.N. Security Council in New York to deploy U.N. peacekeeping troops in the Chad-Central African Republic-Sudan border area to guarantee security.

[edit]

Rebel spokesman Sabone said 20 government troops were killed in the Birao attack, while the rebels lost two fighters.

But the situation remained confused in the remote north, which borders both Chad and Sudan and is a lawless area where armed raiders regularly loot villages and terrorise civilians.

Sabone denied the UFDR, whose name in French means Union of Democratic Forces for Unity, had crossed from Sudan.

He said many of the rebel fighters previously served under Bozize, who seized power in March 2003 with the help of armed recruits from Chad. He then held and won elections in 2005.

Humanitarian officials in Bangui said the latest violence in the north would mean more suffering for civilians there. Some 50,000 have sought refuge in southern Chad in recent years.

"I am very worried about the armed groups operating along the border with Darfur ... After 10 years of instability in the Central African Republic, the last thing the population needs is instability spilling in from outside," Toby Lanzer, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Bangui, told Reuters.

From the AP

A spokesman for shadowy rebels in Central African Republic denied his fighters have bases in Sudan and vowed to oust the president of this volatile nation in the heart of Africa.

Government spokesman Cyriaque Gonda said Monday that armed fighters based in Sudan's troubled Darfur region crossed into Central African Republic a day earlier and attacked the northern town of Birao in fighting that killed both civilians and army troops.

Contacted by telephone from Birao, rebel spokesman Abakar Saboune confirmed his fighters assaulted the town and claimed they now control it.

"We are in full control of the town of Birao and its surroundings," Saboune said, adding that rebels planned to use Birao as a base to push toward the capital, Bangui, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) to the southwest.

Saboune said the rebels had been in Central African Republic since April, when they entered from a neighboring country he declined to name. Central African Republic has borders with Sudan, Chad, Congo, Republic of Congo and Cameroon.

Little is known about the rebels. Unidentified armed groups, have launched sporadic attacks on military installations in remote regions of the Central African Republic over the past year, displacing tens of thousands of refugees.

Saboune was once a well-known army captain who served with rebels led by President Francois Bozize, who swept to power in a bush war that culminated with a rebel assault on Bangui in 2003.

Bozize's forces ousted former President Ange-Felix Patasse, and Bozize later held elections and won the presidency in May 2005.

Darfur: Stronger AU Force Could Bring Peace

From Reuters

A stronger African Union force in Darfur could help consolidate peace within a year and allow 2.5 million refugees to return home, a Sudanese minister said on Tuesday.

But deploying U.N. peacekeepers would "exacerbate the situation" in the region, said Mohamed Yusif Abdallah, minister for culture, youth and sports, who helped negotiate a peace deal signed in May by one rebel group and the Sudanese government.

Sudan rejects a U.N. Security Council resolution to send more than 20,000 U.N. troops to Darfur to replace a 7,000-strong AU force which has been unable to contain violence and prevent what the United Nations says is a deepening humanitarian crisis.

The only problem with the AU operation, which is due to wind up at the end of the year, was that it lacked resources, Abdallah told a news conference.

"We believe if the peace process is strengthened, within a year things would get completely normal and people would go back to their original places," he said.

"(But) an attempt to bring in the U.N. forces which is not agreed upon by the parties in Darfur will exacerbate the situation," he added.

Sudanese officials have said a U.N presence in Darfur would amount to an invasion by the West.

The Sudanese government last week expelled the top U.N. envoy for Sudan Jan Pronk, who accused Khartoum of violating the Abuja accord with renewed aeriel bombing and by mobilising militias accused of atrocities.

Abdallah said Pronk had a "one-sided and imbalanced view".

"In general, the situation in Darfur is far better than before," he said.

But in Geneva, U.N. humanitarian agencies said they faced immense difficulties in getting assistance to those in need in the western Sudan area, which is the size of France.

"I do not think our assessment would tally with that of the Sudanese minister," Jennifer Pagonis, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), told journalists when asked to comment on his remarks.

Darfur: Blair Warns Sudan Close to "Crunch Point"

From Reuters

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Sudan on Tuesday it was nearing the "crunch point" for Khartoum to enforce the peace in Darfur or risk isolation and unspecified action by the international community.

Blair met Sudanese Vice President Salva Kiir in London and told him "everyone must stop fighting and resume dialogue with the people who did not sign up to the peace agreement," Blair's spokesman told reporters.

"We are reaching the crunch point. It's important that the Sudanese government be in no doubt at all of our seriousness," he said at a briefing about the two leaders' talks.

Blair told Kiir there must be "clear progress" by Nov. 24 when African Union leaders meet to discuss Darfur.

[edit]

"The Sudanese government know they face isolation if they do not respond to the will of the international community," the spokesman told reporters, but would not be drawn on what that would mean in practice.

"It would be better to let the Sudanese government absorb the message before we talk in public about that," he said, adding "private messages" were better than public threats at this stage.

Darfur: Muslim Silence a Disgrace

An op-ed by Aijaz Zaka Syed in the Khaleej Times

Why then is the Muslim world silent, for God’s sake? Where is our conscience? Where is our moral outrage? Where are protesting Arabs and Muslims? Why is the so-called Muslim street silent over Darfur? Why doesn’t this mass murder of helpless and innocent people agitate us, just as those innocent Muslims dying in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan do?

Even if we didn’t know those dying in Darfur are indeed Muslims, shouldn’t we still raise our voice against the 21st century’s first and biggest genocide? Aren’t we supposed to stand up and speak for those who cannot do it for themselves?

We never lose an opportunity to blast the West for practising double standards, from Palestine to Iraq to Afghanistan. But what are we doing in Darfur? We turn away our collective gaze while people are dying out there right now, forgotten and forsaken by the rest of the world including the Arab and Muslim countries.

The Arab League refuses to confront Sudan on the shame of Darfur. In fact, it is the other way round. Sudan keeps complaining that League members do not support and stand by it in international forums. Support for what? For murder and rape of fellow Muslims?

The Organisation of Islamic Conference, which claims to represent the faithful everywhere, is yet to wake up to this continuing outrage. The League and OIC are too busy preparing those pointless, regulation resolutions to pay attention to the infinite suffering of the people in Darfur. To the Muslim world’s shame, if anyone has really forced Sudan to take some perfunctory steps on Darfur, it is the uproar and activism of human rights groups in the West.

When will the Arabs and Muslims wake up from their slumber of indifference to stop what is going on in Darfur? For if they do not, they will end up sharing the responsibility for the 21st century’s worst crime against humanity. As Edmund Burke warned, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

CAR/Chad/Darfur: Rebel Raid Shakes Region

From Reuters

rebel capture on Monday of a Central African Republic town near the border with Chad and Sudan shows the need for greater international attention to the volatile area, a U.N. envoy said.

The seizure of the northern town of Birao was "quite worrisome because this is a border zone," said Lamine Cisse, the U.N. special representative for the Central African Republic.

All three countries in the area have been shaken by conflict or civil war and the various rebel groups use the neighboring countries as bases to launch attacks into the others.

Rebel groups based in the troubled Darfur region in Sudan's west, for example, have marched into Chad to seek to topple President Idriss Deby and launched raids into the Central African Republic to drive out President Francois Bozize.

The large number of unemployed armed youths in the border areas makes the region "a breeding ground for recruitment for armed groups," Cisse told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council on the area's troubles.

"This is why it is easy to find groups to destabilize a country," he said. "This is a threat for Sudan, for the Central African Republic and for Chad. This is a full-time danger."

DRC: Appeals for Calm Continue as Elections Wrap Up

From DPA

Sunday's run-off election in the Democratic Republic of Congo was applauded by observers and diplomats, but officials were still appealing for calm in the war-torn country after a few post-election incidents marred an otherwise peaceful vote.

The election marked the end of the country's historic first democratic vote in more then 40 years. Violence erupted weeks after the first vote in July between supporters of the rival presidential candidates Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba, leaving 23 dead.

The UN mission in the Congo continued its call for calm on Tuesday, asking supporters of the two candidates as well as Congolese to accept the results or else contest them through the courts.

The African Union on Tuesday also urged Congolese to show restraint.

Kabila and Bemba signed an agreement ahead of the election to accept the results if they are free and fair and encourage their camps to remain peaceful.

After Sunday's the vote, a drunken soldier shot dead two election helpers at a polling centre in Ituri early Monday morning. The incident sparked some unrest, with relatives of the victims attacking a number of other polling centres in response.

The EU and the UN's missions in the Congo will continue their patrols until the election results are announced. The EU force pulls out at the end of November.

About 20,000 people had to recast their votes in northern Bumba town on Tuesday, with new ballots rushed to the remote area after polling stations were ransacked and ballots burned because of alleged of fraud.

A total of 48 polling stations were attacked during Sunday's vote.

Election officials said all the votes have been tallied at each polling station and the arduous process of carrying the ballots to the capital Kinshasa for tabulation had begun.

The incumbent Kabila is expected to win most of his votes from the country's Swahili-speaking east, whereas Bemba garnered most of his support from the west. Each presidential hopeful has gained backing from first-round candidates, which may boost their results.

The winner, who is slated to be announced on November 19, could be made public as soon as November 9 or 10, according to Desire Baere, a spokesperson for the Independent Electoral Commission.

From Reuters

European Union troops should be able to leave Congo as scheduled on Nov. 30 after a presidential run-off election last Sunday, European Union Foreign Affairs chief Javier Solana said on Tuesday.

"The situation allows us to maintain the existing timetable," Solana told reporters after meeting Spain's defence minister.

The EU has about 1,300 troops in Congo, backing United Nations forces to secure during the elections. They are due to leave on Nov. 30 but some EU members have said soldiers should stay given the risk of post-poll violence.

Results of the vote are still trickling in and the period before and after the election results are announced are expected to be tense.

To End Uganda's Nightmare

An op-ed by John Edwards in the Washington Post

At a moment of tremendous global hardship -- from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the killing fields of Darfur -- it is rare to find hope. So when there is the possibility for peace, we must seize it. That's why one of the world's great tragedies, the conflict in Northern Uganda, deserves our attention.

It is perhaps the worst humanitarian catastrophe to have gone practically unnoticed by most of the world. The two decades of violence in Northern Uganda have had devastating consequences -- nearly 2 million people have been run out of their homes and forced to live in overcrowded, squalid camps; tens of thousands have died; 30,000 children have been abducted by an organization called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to fight as child soldiers or used as sex slaves. Hundreds of villages have been abandoned and destroyed.

To witness the ravaging of Northern Uganda is searing. But meeting its people inspires hope. During a recent visit, I went to the Palabek-Kal camp, where thousands have been crammed into a makeshift village. Hearing their stories of suffering and survival made two points abundantly clear: They are praying for peace every moment, and they expect the world community to do everything possible to help them achieve it. Their yearning was deeply moving, and their collective intensity and faith to build a better future in the midst of such hardship was powerful.

In areas where security is improving and people are beginning to go home, the challenges are just beginning. First among them is the need for adequate access to clean water and sanitation. The rehabilitation and reconstruction of schools, health clinics and other basic infrastructure are equally critical.

Yet before people will feel safe to go home, there must be peace. The talks between the government of Uganda and the LRA offer an unprecedented opportunity to secure a lasting peace in this long and deadly conflict. A cease-fire was signed at the end of August, but as was made clear during my discussions there, it is very fragile. As these African-led negotiations continue, the United States and the international community must step forward to support the talks -- not stand on the sidelines and hope for the best.

First, the United States and the United Nations should offer whatever support outside mediators, led by the government of southern Sudan, require. In particular, assistance in monitoring the cease-fire and the assembly of LRA fighters at two agreed-upon sites in southern Sudan would be critical to boosting the confidence of both sides -- while also holding them accountable to their commitments.

Second, the United States should publicly voice its support of the peace talks and encourage the Ugandan government and the LRA to maintain their commitment to the process. It's understandable that Uganda's government is skeptical of the LRA's intentions, given the atrocities that organization has committed. Yet this is the closest the two sides have ever come to a comprehensive agreement. Uganda needs to know that Washington stands behind the drive for peace and will be a supportive ally after an accord is signed.

Third, the key donors -- the United States, European countries and the United Nations -- must come together and make clear their commitment to providing the financial assistance necessary to help victims rebuild their homes and villages. This will create incentives for both sides and, just as important, lay the foundation for long-term reconstruction and reconciliation -- not only in Northern communities that have been terrorized by the LRA but also between Northern and Southern Uganda. Once the agricultural breadbasket of Uganda, the North has been marginalized and impoverished for decades. It must be integrated more fully into the country.

Finally, the United States and the international community must fulfill their pledges to help southern Sudan recover after more than 30 years of its own war. Peace and reconstruction in Northern Uganda have to be supported by reconstruction and development in neighboring southern Sudan, which is critical for regional economic recovery and cross-border trade.

In a world of unending troubles for the United States, few would argue that Northern Uganda's future is among the most urgent strategic challenges. But our actions in coming weeks will be a critical test of our global leadership. How we act -- and if and how we lead -- will send a message throughout Africa and the rest of the world about what America stands for. We must not sit idly by as Uganda's people strive for peace.

Chad/Darfur: Fighting on Two Fronts in Chaotic East

From IRIN

Even as the bloody fallout from fighting between the Chad army and rebels at Am Timan in southern Chad is still being counted, new clashes have erupted nearby, while further north the Darfur war has reportedly spilled into eastern Chad for the second time in a month.

Recalling fighting last week in Am Timan, a soldier who asked not to be named said: "The rebels came on Monday 23 October, the day of the Ramadan celebration. The combat started five kilometres north of the town and continued for 15 hours. Finally, the rebels infiltrated Am Timan, targeted the local administration, and stole munitions."

Documents and papers rebels thrown out of the windows of administrative buildings in Am Timan are still blowing through the streets. There have been more than a dozen skirmishes in as many months between rebels who have vowed to overthrow Chadian President Idriss Deby and government army loyalists. However, most of the fighting has taken place in remote areas and there are usually few civilian casualties.

Rebels with the Union of Forces for Development and Democracy briefly occupied Am Timan before leaving. Two civilians were killed and the sub-prefect was injured, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, Chad's Interior minister, told IRIN on Saturday.

Colonel Nassour Nouki Charffadine, army chief of operations in Am Timan, said nine soldiers were killed and 10 injured in a firefight that also left 30 rebels dead and 80 injured. At Am Timan's only hospital, doctors said they were treating 32 soldiers and 10 rebels.

The rebels have engaged the government at another town, Saraf Bogou, according to a government statement on Sunday.

In a statement on Sunday morning, Chadian Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadakkah said: "The defence forces have caught up with the attackers from Sudan who infiltrated at Goz Beida and Am Timan that they have been following since their departure from Am Timan. The clash took place Saraf Borgou, close to the Sudan border."

One hundred rebels were killed and several others taken prisoner, as well as several Chadian soldiers, including army Chief of Staff Moussa Sougui, the statement said.

[edit]

Adding further confusion to the mix for aid agencies working to service 12 refugee camps housing 220,000 refugees from Darfur, the Chadian government said in another statement at the weekend that Sudan's air force dropped bombs on the border towns of Bahai, Tine, Karyari and Bamina on Friday.

"The Sudanese air force has taken as targets Chadian towns... destroying houses and tranquil lives of Chadians," government spokesperson Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

Earlier in the month, scores of wounded soldiers and rebels flooded hospitals near Oure Cassoni, north of Abeche, after unrelated fighting between Sudan and rebels opposed to it spilled over the border near Tine.

Chad has blamed Sudan for backing rebels opposed to it. After rebels attacked the capital N'djamena in April Chad broke diplomatic relations with its neighbour, but the two have since made up. After the occupation of Am Timan last week, Chad again accused Sudan of backing rebels.

Khartoum has denied it is supporting the anti-Chad rebels. And Sudanese armed forces spokesman Sawarmy Khalid in Khartoum told IRIN on Sunday that Sudanese warplanes had not bombed towns inside Chad.

"The Chadian accusations are not true," he said. "The Sudanese army and air force did not attack any cities in Chad. [Sudan does] not support any Chadian rebels."

While the fighting between army and rebels in the south of the country, and the alleged bombing near Tine in the north, is all taking place near humanitarian operations, aid agencies said their operations have not been adversely affected.

"Of course, we are threatened, but until now the fighting has been far enough away from our direct zone of operations," said Ann Maymann, spokesperson for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in N'djamena. "We hope they will stay that way with no direct fighting in civilian areas."

"The issue of the bombing cannot be confirmed and has not had an impact on our operations," Maymann added.

Nonetheless, the UN has been discussing the possibility of deploying peacekeepers on the ground in Chad at the same time as in Darfur to protect civilians and the dozen refugee camps housing 220,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur.

[edit]

UN Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, told reporters in New York on Friday that the UN is sending an assessment mission to Chad to again look into the possibility of putting boots on the ground.

"We are very concerned by the deteriorating situation in Chad," he said.

"We are looking at ways that a peace operation could prevent the tragedy of Darfur from expanding further in a bigger tragedy in Chad and the Central African Republic. We will be looking into different options," he said. "We will be sending a mission to Chad and the Central African Republic to look into greater detail into what could be done."

However, Roland Marchal, senior fellow at Sciences Po university in Paris said he does not think a military solution will work. "I would be extremely sceptical about any intervention if there is no political agreement on the ground first," he said. "We need a true political settlement that could enforced and agreed on by all actors, which is not yet the case."

France has a large military force in Chad and has provided surveillance, intelligence and logistical support to Chad's army and was also part of discussions with UN officials in June.

But Marchal said France should not be expected to take a more hands-on approach, either to protect Deby's government or civilians in eastern Chad, because of political sensitivities in France in the run-up to presidential elections next year.

"It would be extremely controversial for anybody in the French state to push for an involvement of this style throughout the electoral period as French people might ask why after 16 years of support are we still in this same situation," Marchal said.

CAR/Chad/Darfur: Rebels Seize Northern Town from Government Forces

From the AP

Unidentified armed fighters based in Sudan's troubled Darfur region crossed into Central African Republic and attacked a northern town here in fighting that killed both civilians and army troops, a government spokesman said Monday.

Armed men on Sunday attacked the northern town of Birao, located 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of Bangui, near the country's borders with Chad and Sudan, government spokesman Cyriaque Gonda said.

It was not immediately known if the attackers were Sudanese government forces or Sudanese rebels, or insurgents from Central African Republic who had set up bases in Sudan.

Gonda gave no details on who the armed men were or how many were killed or injured.

Gonda said the government "firmly condemns this unjustified, barbaric act from a friendly country" and appealed to the United Nations and the African Union to help restore stability to the region.

Earlier, an army lieutenant citing an official report issued by government security forces told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that rebels had captured Birao from government forces, and the army was dispatching troops to retake it on Monday.

The lieutenant declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Details were sketchy and little is known about the rebels, who have launched sporadic attacks on military installations in Central African Republic over the last year, sparking the flight of tens of thousands of refugees.

From VOA

Military officials in the Central African Republic say rebels have captured a northern town near the borders with Chad and Sudan.

Military sources said Monday that rebels seized the town of Birao from government forces.

Birao is located some 800 kilometers northeast of the capital Bangui, in a region that government forces do not fully control.

Security has deteriorated in the northern part of the country this year. Armed groups operate in the region and violence has forced the displacement of tens of thousands of people.

Some of the violence has spilled over from Sudan's Darfur region.

Chad/Darfur: Violence Threatens Regional Peace

From VOA

Rebels with the United Forces for Democracy and Development and Chadian army forces both declared victory Sunday after renewed clashes in the country's east.

Chadian authorities confirmed that the army's deputy commander-in-chief, General Moussa Sougui, died during the fighting.

Each side says it suffered few losses in its own camp, but killed hundreds of opponents. There are no independent observers in the remote scrubland to verify those claims.

The fighting is the latest flare-up in a conflict between Chadian President Idriss Deby and a growing number of rebel groups.

Analyst Roland Marchal with France's Institute for Political Science says the rebel numbers are growing because there is little room in Chadian politics for differing views.

"We are in a situation where the only opposition that seems to have any influence is the armed opposition," he said. "The problem is that we started last year with basically two groups, and now we are around six or seven."

Many of Chad's rebel groups are led by former top government officials. A number of those fighting the government defected from the Chadian national army.

Chad has long accused Sudan of funding the rebel movements and supplying them with arms. Last week, rebels fired a surface-to-air missile at a French reconnaissance plane.

Sudan has denied the charges and in turn accused Chad of aiding anti-government forces in Sudan's Darfur region.

A similar article from the AP

Fears are mounting that escalating violence in Sudan's volatile Darfur region is spreading.

A top Chadian army chief was killed in fierce fighting between government troops and rebels close to Darfur, officials said Monday.

Gen. Moussa Sougui, the army's deputy Commander in Chief, was killed during heavy fighting close to the Sudanese border in eastern Chad, a Defense Ministry statement said late Sunday.

In the statement, Defense Minister Gen. Bichara Issa Djadallah said the government had killed 100 rebel fighters and captured many more and were still pursuing other rebels. There was no way to immediately verify the claims.

He said four government soldiers, including the general, were killed during the fighting early Sunday near Hadjer Meram, a town 30 miles from the Sudanese border.

Chad has accused Sudan of bombing four towns along its eastern border.

Sudan denied the Chadian report, and there were no independent confirmation of the claims that Sudan's air force attacked the villages of Bahai, Tine, Kayarin and Bamina on Friday.

The United Nations announced Friday that it was sending a mission to both Chad and the Central African Republic to look for ways to keep the escalating conflict in Darfur from spilling into other countries.

Rebel groups are using various nations as rear bases to stage destabilizing attacks in both Chad and Sudan's western Darfur region, and "the humanitarian fallout is extremely serious," U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno said in New York.

Darfur: Government Still Seeking Military Solution

From IRIN

In his briefing to the United Nations Security Council on Friday, the UN’s top official in Sudan, Jan Pronk, highlighted the government’s gross violations of the Darfur Peace Agreement and stressed that Sudan was still looking for a military solution to the deepening crisis.

Pronk added that his ongoing criticism of the Sudanese government’s decision to seek a military solution, having signed a ceasefire agreement, had prompted his expulsion from his position of UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Sudan.

"The government is mobilising more and more forces in the region, amongst others, those coming from the south. Security Council resolutions forbidding offensive air operations are being neglected," he told council members in what he characterised as "probably" his last briefing to the council.

To illustrate, Pronk cited a meeting he had held with rebel commanders in Birmaza, where he implored leaders to stop looting aid vehicles, and to stop attacking the African Union Mission (AMIS), which is in Darfur until the end of December.

"Now that the UN is giving support to AMIS, I will consider any attack on AMIS an attack on the UN," he told the rebels. They immediately undertook not to attack government troops, but were bombed by the Sudanese government air force within 14 hours of his departure. "I consider this characteristic of the present attitude," he said.

The 7,500-strong AMIS force had its mandate extended until December 2006 by the AU Peace and Security Commission, as the Sudanese government has continually refused to accept UN peacekeepers in the region, even after a council resolution was adopted calling for UN troop deployment.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jean-Marie Guehenno, also briefed the council and spoke to reporters on the continuing UN efforts to strengthen AMIS.

"There has to be a political process, and the United Nations stands ready to engage as it has done, to engage further to promote the political process in Darfur and support the efforts of the African Union," said Guehenno.

During consultations, the council discussed the fear that the situation in Darfur would spill over to other parts of the region, including eastern Chad. Guehenno announced an upcoming UN mission to Chad and the Central African Republic to see what could be done to help more than 50,000 internally displaced people and 200,000 refugees in eastern Chad alone.

"We are looking at ways in which a peace operation could prevent the tragedy of Darfur from expanding further [to create] a bigger tragedy in Chad and the Central African Republic," said Guehenno.

Pronk, who was also concerned about the possible regional impact of Darfur, had been asked to leave Sudan by the government on 22 October due to his web-blog comments, in which he characterised the Sudanese armed forces as having low morale and indicated that the forces had recently lost several battles.

Addressing reporters after the council meeting, Pronk said he believed the government’s decision to expel him was due to his criticisms "of the fact that the government continued to fight, to seek a military solution, despite the fact a ceasefire agreement had been signed; despite the fact that the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement] had been signed", adding that he was also critical of the ceasefire violations of the rebel movement. "My incessant criticism of this was the reason for them to silence me," he added. "I have one request for the council. Please stay alert and remain attuned. After all the sorrow in Sudan, in the south as well as in Darfur, the people over there, neglected and oppressed for decades, should not be forgotten in the turbulence of other world affairs. They are counting on you," he concluded.

Stéphane Dujarric, UN spokesman, outlined plans for Pronk’s return. "Following ongoing consultations with the Sudanese authorities, it is expected that Mr Pronk will return to Khartoum during November to organise an orderly handover to the officer in charge of the UN mission before returning to New York for debriefings and the completion of his mission," he said.

When asked whether the UN had received an official response from the Sudan government, Dujarric said, "We do not expect any problems with the scenario that has been laid out." No official date has been set yet for his trip.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, however, denied this, saying: "This issue for us is over and we are not backtracking from our decision; no arrangement was worked out with us," he said. "People should really respect our sovereign position."

Darfur: Khartoum Insists it Has Plan to Disarm Janjaweed

From AFP

Sudan said Monday that a plan had been set up to disarm Darfur's infamous Janjaweed - the pro-government militia accused by Washington of genocide - and all other militias within two months.

"We have put in place a plan for disarming the militias in Darfur in two months, in cooperation with the African Union," President Omar al-Beshir said in a televised speech marking the opening of the new parliamentary session.

Beshir did not say how the Janjaweed would be disarmed.

Government officials had told the Sudanese press two weeks ago that a two-month plan to disarm militias in Darfur had been drafted and submitted to the African Union.

[edit]

Commentators and experts have been sceptical of any plan to disarm militias in Darfur, a territory roughly the size of France, in the absence of an effective peacekeeping force on the ground.

Khartoum has vehemently rejected the August UN Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of up to 20 000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

Its relations with the international community further deteriorated earlier this month when it expelled the top resident UN envoy, Jan Pronk.

At least 200 000 people have died as a result of fighting, famine and disease, and more than two million fled their homes since rebels launched an uprising in Darfur in early 2003, drawing a scorched earth response from the military and the Janjaweed.

In his speech, Beshir praised the African Union and said that the peace deal signed earlier this month in Asmara with a coalition of eastern rebels was evidence that Sudan needed no western assistance.

"The Asmara agreement has given evidence that the Sudanese alone can solve their differences," he said.

Chad: Anti-Deby Rebels Say They Will Strike Again

From Reuters

Chadian rebels who fought government forces over the last week, briefly seizing two towns, said on Monday they were still inside Chad and would strike again against President Idriss Deby's army.

A fighting column of the newly formed rebel United Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) pushed west last week towards N'Djamena before pulling back towards the eastern border with Sudan in the face of a government counter-attack.

Chad's Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah said at the weekend that the government army in the landlocked central African oil producer had cornered the rebels, inflicting heavy casualties and taking many prisoners.

But the minister also said that the joint head of Chad's armed forces, Gen. Moussa Sougui, had died after being wounded in the fighting. This appeared to be a fresh setback to Deby's forces, which have been drained by desertions in the last year.

Speaking to Reuters by satellite phone, UFDD leader Gen. Mahamat Nouri, a former defence minister who defected from Deby's government in May, said his fighters were still inside Chad in the region of Goz Beida.

"There's no fighting today, we're OK here," Nouri said over a faint, crackling line. He added that, besides Sougui, other army officers were killed in heavy government losses.

Chad's government had said its forces had pushed the rebels over the border into Sudan.

Asked whether the UFDD planned further attacks against Deby's forces, Nouri replied: "Absolutely. We have our strategy to take on the government forces".

But Nouri, a former Chadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia who announced his defection days after May 3 polls that returned Deby for a third term, said his forces did not intend to advance on the capital N'Djamena for the moment.

Chad: Army Chief Killed in Clashes With Rebels

From Reuters

The joint head of Chad's armed forces was killed in fierce fighting with rebels near the Sudanese border on Sunday, the defence minister said, in a heavy blow to embattled President Idriss Deby.

Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah claimed victory in Sunday's fighting and said more than 100 rebels were killed after government forces clashed with a convoy of insurgents which had briefly seized two Chadian towns this week.

But the death of General Moussa Sougui was a major setback to Deby, coming only months after the rebels killed his nephew and head of the army, Brigadier General Ababar Youssouf Mahamat Itno, in March. The armed forces have been drained by a steady trickle of desertions and relations with Sudan are tense.

"The (rebel) mercenaries sustained around 100 dead, several prisoners and 15 vehicles destroyed. ... On the side of the forces of defence and security, there were four dead, including General Moussa Sougui who fell on the field of honour," read a communique signed by the minister.

The fighting took place at Saraf Borgou, a village close to the border with Sudan, which Deby's government accuses of supporting and arming the rebels. With the rebel's escape route severed to Sudan's western region of Darfur, Djadallah said the army would mop up the remaining fighters.

"Surrounded in a area with no way out, the mercenaries at the service of Sudan have no chance of escaping this cleaning up operation," his statement said.

[edit]

Chad's rebels, divided into several ethnic factions, demand the resignation of Deby, who won a fresh five-year term in May at elections boycotted by the opposition as a farce. The opposition says only French support holds the regime in power, but French diplomats say the alternative to Deby is chaos.

"There is an urgent need for a political compromise with the political opposition, a military victory against the armed opposition, and the securing of the eastern border with Sudan for stability to return to Chad," political risk consultancy Global Insight wrote in a report on Friday.

Last week, the heavily armed rebel convoy of the newly formed United Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) penetrated deep into Chad before melting into the desert -- Chad says into Sudan -- as government reinforcements arrived.

On Saturday, Chad accused Sudan of bombing the towns of Bahai, Tine, Karyari and Bamina, destroying homes and sowing panic among residents just a few kilometres (miles) from the frontier with strife-torn Darfur.

Khartoum, which alleges that Chad supports rebels in Darfur, denied its air force had taken part in any operation which would violate a deal in August to restore diplomatic relations after months of tension.

Darfur: Europe's Indifference

From Eric Reeves in the New Republic

When it comes to the failure of the world to stop Darfur's cataclysm of remorseless human destruction, there is blame to go around. There is the glaring duplicity of the U.N. Secretariat; the shameful hypocrisy of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference; the disorganized incompetence of the African Union; and the serene indifference of the various important nations in Asia. To many, it is the Bush administration that bears chief responsibility for international inaction.

Yet the nations and institutions of Europe also deserve special recognition for their complacency. Rhetorical performance is robust in some quarters, but, despite Europe's diplomatic, economic, and military power--and its own experience with genocide over the last century--there is no indication that Europe is considering any commensurate action. There is certainly much to criticize in U.S. policy during the past three and a half years of massive, ethnically targeted violence. But, as bad as the United States has been on Darfur, Europe has been worse.

In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell declared unambiguously to Congress that the United States had determined "genocide has been committed in Darfur, and the government of Sudan and the jinjaweid bear responsibility." Still, Powell declared that this determination required "no new action" by the United States (beyond referring it to an obviously paralyzed and hopelessly politicized U.N. Security Council). Consequently, Powell's testimony may have marked the death knell for the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, at least as an international treaty that has any meaning for genocide prevention.

But, the same month, a much less well reported determination was rendered by the Parliament of the European Union, which declared in a resolution passed by a vote of 566 to 6 (with some abstentions) that realities in Darfur were "tantamount to genocide." This striking turn of phrase gets to the very heart of the European attitude toward Darfur. There is no meaningful distinction between a determination that a given set of realities are "genocide" and a determination they are "tantamount to genocide" ("tantamount" means, in fact, "equivalent in significance"). So why the circumlocution? Why any indirection if we are speaking of the ultimate human crime?

The reason is entirely legalistic: The various (if disputed) obligations that follow from a genocide determination by any nation that signed the 1948 Genocide Convention all fall away if the finding is "tantamount to genocide," rather than "genocide" itself. It is the perfect weasel phrase, and it does much to account for the lopsided nature of the vote. Invoking the word but not the contractual obligations, the Parliament of the European Union happily put itself on record as deploring, in a kind of ultimate language, the ultimate crime--but with no real entailments.

This disposition has defined European policy toward Darfur for the last two years. We may be hearing brave words from Tony Blair about troops to Darfur, but we heard the same talk last spring. And, in the summer of 2004, Great Britain's top military officer, General Sir Mike Jackson, declared that Britain could field a brigade to stop genocide in Darfur. But no one in the British government seemed interested.

France has been even less helpful on Darfur, especially at the United Nations. So it was particularly significant when, last month, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy became the first senior French official to speak of "genocide" in Darfur, declaring it unacceptable and explicitly contemplating nonconsensual deployment to protect civilians in the region. He was quickly and completely undercut by comments from French President Jacques Chirac.

Peter Struck, the German defense minister, also declared Darfur to be the site of genocide in September 2004; so, too, did British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in April 2005. But the actions of the Europeans--individually, within the European Union, and within nato (which moves by notoriously slow consensus)--have been dismayingly and consistently ineffectual, despite a determination that vast, ethnically targeted human destruction has been underway for years and is currently accelerating.

The strongest measure the Europeans seem willing to push for is continued deployment of an African Union mission in Darfur as the sole international response to catastrophic security conditions, threatening not only some four million conflict-affected human beings but the extensive humanitarian operations upon which they depend. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706, passed on August 31, calls for a robust force of 17,300 troops, 3,300 civilian police, and 2,000 additional security personnel. But, instead of confronting Khartoum over its obdurate refusal to allow U.N. deployment, European officials have been perversely accommodating. EU policy chief Javier Solana recently declared that Khartoum's acceptance of a modest augmentation of the A.U. force--comprising logistics, a few advisory personnel, and some additional equipment (what has come to be called "African Union-Plus")--represented "progress toward a genuine U.N. force in the region." Such disingenuous incrementalism ensures that no effective force will deploy in time to avert the second phase of the Darfur genocide now underway, violence that now threatens to become as great as the initial wave of targeted ethnic destruction in 2003-2004.

When President Bush spoke of "natostewardship" in February of this year, his comments were quickly "corrected" by the Pentagon, which declared that any specific commitment of U.S. resources was "premature"--but not before European NATO officials in Brussels had sniffed contemptuously at the very idea of such "stewardship." And, while natohas provided some logistics and transport--critical for an African Union mission that has none of the appropriate resources for a Darfur mission--the current attitude from our European nato allies was recently summed up by natoSecretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said, "Darfur will, as far as nato is concerned, continue to see a continuation of what we are giving now to the African Union."

Rwanda: Genocide Probe Reopens Old Wounds

From Reuters

A Rwandan probe into France's role in the 1994 genocide has reopened bitter resentment in the tiny central African nation, still healing from the slaughter in which many believe Paris had a largely unseen hand.

The two former allies have been at loggerheads since the end of the genocide, since Rwanda accuses France of backing former President Juvenal Habyarimana's government.

France denies any involvement and instead says its military interventions helped Rwandans.

The government of President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi whose Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels defeated the Habyarimana government's Hutu militias to end the killing, blames France for training soldiers they knew would later commit genocide.

Twelve years after extremist Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers over 100 days, Rwanda launched the commission last week to bring out the truth about France's role.

"The only thing I love about the French is their sense of style," said survivor Candide Nyirabutama. "However when it comes to their cynical policies -- especially in our country -- there's no love between me and them."

Though Rwanda was a Belgian colony until independence in 1962, France maintained close links with the Francophone country from 1975 to 1994, providing financial and military support to Habyarimana's government. Some Rwandans say their country was run by remote control from Paris.

"I do not have kind words for the French," shopkeeper Joseph Harelimana, 30, said.

"It's the French that held the key to our survival -- had they wished to save us, then those innocent lives would not have perished," said Harelimana, who lost 10 relatives.

One event sure to take centre-stage in the inquiry is a June 1994 massacre in the hilltop village of Bisesero where as many as 50,000 Tutsis were hacked to death by Hutu militiamen.

Survivors say French soldiers told Tutsis they would protect them, but instead gathered them in one place where they were later hacked to death with machetes.

"They abandoned us hours later after Hutu militiamen had surrounded us -- that day people were killed like flies," said survivor Valence Habiyambere.

When English-speaking Tutsi rebels invaded Rwanda in 1990, the French described the war in linguistic terms, National University of Rwanda political scientist Anastase Shyaka said.

"The propaganda was that the English-speaking people had invaded French-speaking people," Shyaka said. "That was one of the excuses that the French used to openly support the then-ruling regime."

Darfur: If Not Now, When?

The latest from Nick Kristof

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Darfur isn’t that gunmen on the Sudanese payroll heave babies into bonfires as they shout epithets against blacks. It’s that the rest of us are responding only with averted eyes and polite tut-tutting.

This past week alone, Sudan expelled the U.N. envoy for Sudan and sent a proxy army to invade eastern Chad. Those moves underscored both the audacity of Sudan’s leaders and the fecklessness of the rest of the world’s.

In fact, there’s plenty we can do. The international community has focused on getting U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur, but Sudan refuses to admit them. The stalemate drags on; the slaughter continues — but here’s what we can do:

• Kofi Annan should appoint a new U.N. envoy of utmost prominence. Possibilities include Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Richard Holbrooke and Bernard Kouchner (a founder of Doctors Without Borders). The envoy’s job would be to lead an intensive negotiation aimed at achieving a political settlement.

The focus has been on getting U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur, and they are needed, but in the long run only a peace accord can calm Darfur. “This is distracting from the main need,” Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a Sudanese human rights campaigner, said of the focus on peacekeepers. In May a peace agreement was stillborn after only one Darfur rebel faction signed it, but the pact can be renegotiated, for the differences are small and bridgeable.

• President Bush and European leaders need to use their leverage on four nations in particular to make them part of the solution: China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya. China is playing a disgraceful role underwriting the Darfur genocide, by giving Sudan the guns used to shoot children and by protecting Sudan in the U.N. Security Council. And the three Arab states need to be involved so that Sudan cannot claim that plans to protect Darfuris are American or Jewish plots to dismember the country.

“It is very clear there is a plan to redraw the region,” the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, said last month, explaining the calls for U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. “Any state in the region should be weakened, dismembered in order to protect the Israelis.”

Sudanese journalists say that Mr. Bashir has cleverly used such arguments to portray himself as a nationalist, and as a result is in a stronger position now than when he started killing babies in Darfur. Arab leaders need to show that they care about Muslim children being shot even when Israel is not responsible.

• To get more coverage on Al Jazeera and other Arab networks, Mr. Annan could take a planeload of Arab journalists on a visit to Darfur refugee camps. Condi Rice could do the same. The U.S. could put video footage (I’d supply some) of Darfur atrocities on its Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra.

• The U.S., France and U.N. should immediately send peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic to prop up those countries (the U.S. can supply airlift, intelligence and communications support, but our ground troops would create a backlash). Sudan has sent proxy forces to invade both, and they are teetering.

• We need contingency plans for forcible military intervention. There is talk that in the coming months Sudan’s janjaweed militias may start systematically massacring some of the two million people who have taken shelter in camps in Darfur. If that were to happen, U.N. and NATO forces would have to go in and rescue those people — and if Sudan knew of such contingency plans, that would make massacres less likely.

• The U.S. and French air forces should jointly impose a no-fly zone from the French air base in Abéché, Chad, as the Chadian president has invited us to do.

• Western countries should apply targeted sanctions that freeze international assets of Sudanese leaders whom the U.N. has already listed as involved in the genocide.

• Mr. Bush must use his bully pulpit. He could invite Arab and African leaders to the White House for a summit on Darfur. He could suggest to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, that they jointly visit the area.

After fewer than 10,000 white people had died in Kosovo, the U.S. intervened to prevent a genocide. So far, several hundred thousand black people have been slaughtered in Darfur, and our president hasn’t even dedicated a speech to it.

If we don’t try bold new approaches now, when? After 750,000 have died and Chad has collapsed? After all north central Africa is in chaos and 1.5 million are dead? When?

Darfur: 'I Hate Myself for Being Involved in This War'

From the Telegraph

Bullets kicked up the dust in front of the armoured car. Another round flashed overhead, close enough for its high-pitched whine to be heard.

The African Union fuel convoy moving west across Darfur had driven straight into a firefight between the Sudanese army and rebels, in which the army was coming off worst. As mortar rounds exploded ahead, an injured government soldier crawled weakly towards his machine gun truck while another lay dead in front of a battered yellow lorry.

Three years after it attempted to quell a rebellion in its western Darfur region by unleashing a nomadic Arab militia known as the janjaweed – literally "devils on horseback" – Sudan's government has lost control of the war.

The suffering inflicted, in terms of hundreds of thousands dead and more than 2.5 million people displaced, has left Khartoum ostracised by the international community. More worrying for Sudan's President Omar al Bashir is that his army is demoralised and reluctant to fight on.

Sitting with his AK-47 at the guardhouse outside the Fata Burno camp for internally displaced people in north Darfur last week, Cpl Mohammed Adam Dahir said the army no longer had the stomach for the fight. "Even I hate myself, being involved in this war," he said. "Everyone wants it to end.

"I totally condemn what is going on. At the beginning of the war, I saw so many atrocities. I was helping to bury the dead. I don't want to stay in the army. I don't like it here because there is injustice and inequality. There is no protection for the civilians."

Cpl Dahir's words confirm the suspicions of Jan Pronk, the United Nations envoy, who was controversially expelled by Khartoum for claiming that Sudanese army morale was plummeting after defeat in two battles. The UN said yesterday, however, that Mr Pronk would return to the country until his contract expires at the end of the year.

The government had accused Mr Pronk of trying to undermine its authority, but the view given to The Sunday Telegraph from troops on the ground suggests that he was right about low morale. Cpl Dahir, 47, joined up 18 years ago and should be demobilising to rejoin the wife and five children he rarely sees. However, his commanders say that there are not enough soldiers and he must stay on.

Sixteen of them live in the rough brick building next to the camp. The army is supposed to send them food and water, but that stopped long ago.

"I am tired of it all," said his comrade, Cpl Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim. "I am worried about my family. They don't have enough food or money." None of the soldiers had seen the army attack civilians, they said. It was the janjaweed, their ostensible allies, who were to blame.

"What upsets me most is they kill the innocents and take their property," said Cpl Dahir. "The janjaweed are pro-government, but they go where there are people and animals and take the opportunity to fight for their own interests."

As he spoke, the secretary of the camp, Mohammed Yusuf Adam, reported that the janjaweed were in fields nearby, trying to steal livestock from locals. Cpl Dahir did not get up. "I will write a report and file it," he said. "Later I will take soldiers and try to drive them away."

An hour earlier, in the Kassab camp at Kutum, residents told African Union police that the janjaweed had snatched three women who were out collecting firewood that morning. Despite the fact that abducted women are usually raped, the police said they did not have the resources or authority to intervene.

[edit]

Meanwhile, the African Union has to muddle through with its force of 7,000 soldiers. Hamstrung by obstacles placed in its path by Khartoum, it has neither the manpower nor the resources for the job, and cannot move along the roads without permission from the rebels or the government.

Every time it makes progress, an armed faction appears to complicate the situation further. "People need to be noble, they need to want peace," said Col Richard Lourens, the South African commander of the African Union force in Kutum, north Darfur.

"But there is a sneakiness in this country. It is like the HIV virus. Every time you build up immunity they change form."

It was one of his convoys that came under fire last week as The Sunday Telegraph travelled with it. Getting caught in the crossfire is a common hazard of their mission, as is getting bogged down on the rough, sandy roads.

"Going nowhere slowly," one of the soldiers joked, as the detachment prepared to spend another night by the roadside. It is the name of a popular South African television programme, but it could equally sum up the African Union mission.

"If I had another 1,000 men, then 'Wow'," said Col Lourens. "If the janjaweed broke wind, I would know they broke wind."

The African Union can barely make ends meet. The soldiers have not been paid since August and, at Kutum, they live on a monotonous diet of rice and goat.

Like many of his colleagues, Col Lourens would be happy if the UN dropped plans to send in its own force and instead funded an enhanced African Union force under a tough new mandate.

But while the diplomats wrangle, the warring factions continue to strengthen their hands.

"As long as the government of Sudan has power it will hold on to it," said Col Lourens. "But others also want land and power. They are prepared to see their people suffer and be displaced. Where is the will for peace?"

Chad/Darfur: Gov't Accuses Sudan of Bombing Eastern Towns

From Reuters

Chad on Saturday accused Sudan's air force of bombing four towns along its eastern frontier, but Khartoum dismissed the allegation as propaganda aimed at undermining an uneasy peace between the two neighbors.

Chadian President Idriss Deby's government said Sudan bombed the towns of Bahai, Tine, Karyari and Bamina on Friday, destroying homes and sowing panic among residents. It did not give any information on casualties.

"The government expects the African Union ... and the United Nations to condemn this bombardment of peaceful Chadian citizens and for them to work to stop the repeated Sudanese attacks against Chad," a statement from the government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

"In the face of this escalation of Sudanese aggression, all necessary steps have been taken to permit security and defense forces to carry out their responsibilities," he added.

[edit]

"This is part of an information campaign to undermine the peace between Sudan and Chad," said a spokesman for the Sudanese air force. Sudanese forces had not carried out operations in the region since early October when they clashed with Darfur rebels at Kari Yari dam near the border, he said.

In this week's raid deep into central Chad, fighters of the newly formed Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) briefly seized two towns, before their convoy retreated eastward. N'Djamena says they sought refuge in Sudan.

Hospital officials in the town of Am Timan told Reuters at least 20 rebels and nine government soldiers were killed in fighting there on Tuesday, with dozens of injured.

Darfur: Pronk Accuses Sudan of Fresh Violations

From VOA

Special envoy Jan Pronk briefed the Security Council Friday on what he called "dire conditions" in Darfur, and on events that led Sudan to expel him.

Pronk was given three days to leave the country last week after noting on his personal website that the Sudanese army had suffered heavy losses in Darfur.

In comments Friday, he accused Sudanese authorities of violating U.N. resolutions by mobilizing Arab militias, known as janjaweed, that have been accused of genocide. He also charged Khartoum with renewed aerial bombardment in violation of a peace agreement.

Pronk rejected Khartoum's contention that he had exceeded his mandate as special U.N. envoy, and said all information on his Web blog was obtained from the Sudanese media.

"It was very well known that soldiers were retreating, not willing to fight. That was public knowledge, that there was low morale, and I said that this resulted in which I deplored very much,in the incorporation of militia and janjaweed in the paramilitary forces, the militia and the janjaweed are not disciplined, they kill. If you steal camels, they kill, in retaliation, babies," he said.

After speaking to Pronk, Secretary-General Annan said he retains full confidence in the envoy. Mr. Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Pronk would keep his job until his contract runs out in December, despite his expulsion, and would make a brief symbolic return to Sudan next month.

"Mr. Pronk will return to Khartoum to organize an orderly handover to the officer in charge of the mission before returning to New York for debriefings, but will remain the special representative until the end of the year," he said.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem says Khartoum considers Pronk "history", and accused him of abusive behavior. Speaking to reporters Friday, he did not rule out that Pronk might be allowed to visit Khartoum, but said he would not be recognized as a diplomat.

"We terminated his mandate, his responsibilities as the special envoy of the secretary general. It is our right to do so if somebody is threatening our national interest, and in any other capacity that is a totally different issue, but for us, his functions as special envoy of the secretary-general have ceased to exist," he said.

After Friday's Security Council briefing, the Council president for October, Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima defended Pronk and said there had been wide praise from members for his willingness to speak frankly about the dire conditions in Darfur.

"In a situation such as in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have perished. And millions are suffering in dire humanitarian situations, that frankness, that outspokenness can come only from a man who has deep conviction and commitment," he said.

Sudan: Misery Churns in East, Away From Spotlight

From the New York Times

Ali Hamid Ahmed used to be the elder of a village full of green fields and thousands of goats.

But a little-known war between the government and a spreading rebel force drove his people from their homes to a camp at the far eastern edge of Sudan, where the horizon is paper-flat and the land is about as fertile as a sandbox.

The people here are battered by the sun, the wind and the sand; the tribal scars cut into Mr. Ahmed’s face when he was a little boy are constantly creased with dust. Mr. Ahmed’s people still call him “the chairman,” but out here, Mr. Ahmed says, he is the chairman of nothing.

“We have no animals,” he said. “All we have is dirt.”

It is a scene of desolation and despair in a country with much of both. But what is different about the crisis in eastern Sudan is that few outside organizations are paying attention. While there are an estimated 25,000 aid workers in Darfur, the war-ravaged region on the other side of the country that has become the focus of a ceaseless flurry of diplomatic activity, here in Togley there are not even plastic tarps for the huts.

Eastern Sudan is forgotten Sudan, an intriguing, isolated, sun-blasted corner of the country where a conservative culture and a slow-burning war have conspired to keep the people mired in neglect despite the area’s port and oil riches.

The war may finally be over — eastern rebels who had been fighting for a greater share of the country’s resources reached an agreement with the government on Oct. 14 to lay down their weapons in exchange for political representation and a share of the nation’s oil money.

But the neglect will take years to reverse. Eastern Sudan, which encompasses roughly 180,000 square miles and nearly four million people, is the poorest part of the country, with the highest infant mortality rate and a per capita income in some areas of 25 cents a day, a small fraction of the national average.

In remote villages, most women cannot even write their own names, partly because of a strict Muslim culture that forbids education for girls and confines them to their homes.

“These women have nothing to do but sit around and drink coffee and scar themselves,” said Niyal Mohammed al-Haj, a teacher in Kasala, one of the biggest towns in the east. “Girls don’t go to school; boys drop out, and nobody cares.”

One of the reasons that the east has largely gone unnoticed is that the scale of fighting could never compete with the conflicts in Darfur or southern Sudan. The fighting here is thought to have claimed between 2,000 and 5,000 lives in the last 10 years, compared with hundreds of thousands in Darfur and the south.

Yet, the east is increasingly vital to the nation, home to gold mines and the country’s major oil pipeline and port. As the troubles intensified in Darfur, Sudan’s leaders in Khartoum, the capital, could hardly afford to fight another escalating rebellion.

Sudan/Uganda: Attack Kills Five Near Southern Capital

From Reuters

Unknown armed men attacked a south Sudan village killing five people, the latest in a spate of assaults terrorising villagers and hampering humanitarian aid access to one of the poorest areas on earth.

Almost daily attacks have shocked residents around southern Sudan's capital Juba over the past 10 days, including four last week which claimed 38 lives. Thursday's attack was on Garbo village, which faces Juba on the Nile.

The former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), now the official southern army, arrested 15 members of the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on Oct. 19 suspected of carrying out earlier strikes.

The 15, seen by Reuters, are mostly southern soldiers from SAF with one from the western Darfur region. They had SAF identification numbers and wore green khaki military uniforms.

Despite the arrests, attacks have continued.

The United Nations in Juba says it is not clear who is behind the attacks. During two decades of civil war that ended in January 2005, arms were freely available to all in the south.

On Thursday night, heavy gunfire and artillery wailed so close to Juba that businessmen and aid workers hurriedly left their dining tables on the banks of the Nile to take cover.

In Garbo, residents are convinced the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) were responsible for Thursday's attack.

"They were not speaking Arabic or English, but another language I think Swahili," said Justinta Kgeji, whose husband was killed in the attack. "These were the Tonga Tonga (LRA)."

But she added one of the attackers did speak a local form of Arabic. Swahili is commonly spoken across neighbouring Uganda.

Darfur: UN Considers Peace Mission in Chad and CAR

From Reuters

The United Nations is considering a monitoring mission or peacekeeping force in Chad where the spillover from violence in Sudan's Darfur region has resulted in more than 200,000 refugees.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of U.N. peacekeeping, told the U.N. Security Council on Friday he was sending a mission to Chad and the Central African Republic, which is also affected by the Darfur conflict, to investigate options.

A monitoring operation would include a standby rapid reaction force, supplied by one country or the United Nations, to check for trouble, especially at border points. It would observe the "security situation in the region and cross-border activities of armed groups" and alert local authorities, Guehenno said in his briefing notes, obtained by Reuters.

Although the mission would not "have a major and direct impact on protection of civilians," its presence could bring about a limited improvement in the situation through deterrence, active monitoring and reporting, Guehenno said.

Both Sudan and Chad are supporting each other's rebels and at least one Sudanese rebel group is forcibly recruiting in the camps, according to the U.N. refugee agency. The war in Darfur, where 200,000 people have died over the past three years, has forced villagers to flee to Chad.

"We would want to be as expeditious as possible because we feel that this is a situation that needs to be urgently addressed," Guehenno said.

A peacekeeping force could help protect camps, patrol border areas and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, Guehenno said.

But Guehenno said a peacekeeping mission would come "with considerable challenges and risks," including finding troops, and getting the Chad government to approve.

Part of the problem is the lack of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, which the Khartoum government has turned down, to bolster an under-equipped African Union operation in Sudan's vast western region.

In the Central African Republic, rebel groups have destabilized border regions with Sudan and Darfur, forcing about 200,000 people out of their homes. Some of the armed groups are youths and bandits with no other form of employment, according to Toby Lanzer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator there.

Darfur: Pronk to be Replaced by Deputy?

That is what the AP is reporting, though nothing in the article makes that point explicitly

The top U.N. special envoy to Sudan will be officially replaced by his deputy when his contract expires at the end of the year, a U.N. spokesman said Friday, days after the diplomat was ordered to leave Sudan because of postings on his Web blog.

Jan Pronk, who was to address the U.N. Security Council later Friday about the situation in the violence-plagued Darfur region of Sudan, was expected to return to Khartoum next month to organize the handover, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Dujarric said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan still has full confidence in Pronk, the U.N.'s special representative in Sudan for more than two years.

"However, he also realizes that at a critical time in the Darfur negotiations, it is important that we preserve a good working relationship with the government of Sudan," Dujarric said at a news conference.

Taye Zerihoun, the deputy U.N. special envoy to Sudan, is currently in charge of operations in Sudan in Pronk's absence.

This UN press release says Pronk will return to Sudan in order to "organize an orderly handover to the Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Mission" and says that the Officer-in-Charge is Taye Zerihoun but I don't know if that means Zerihoun is the Officer-in-Charge merely in Pronk's absence or if Zerihoun will become head of the mission when Pronk steps down. Zerihoun's current position is Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General

The following statement was issued today by the Spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan:

The Secretary-General has now confirmed that Jan Pronk will continue to serve as his Special Representative in the Sudan until the end of the year, when his contract is set to expire.

Following ongoing consultations with the Sudanese authorities, it is expected that Mr. Pronk will return to Khartoum during November to organize an orderly handover to the Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Mission, before returning to New York for debriefings and the completion of his mission.

As you will recall, on Sunday, 22 October, the Secretary-General received a letter from the Sudanese Foreign Minister, which stated that the Government of National Unity considered Pronk’s mission as “terminated”, and requested Mr. Pronk to leave the Sudan within 72 hours. The Secretary-General subsequently requested his Special Representative to travel to New York for consultations.

The Secretary-General has protested the decision with President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of the Sudan, and has reiterated his full confidence in Jan Pronk.

The Secretary-General has made it clear that he alone can decide on the tenure of his Special Representatives. However, he also realizes that, at a critical time in the Darfur negotiations, it is important that we preserve a good working relationship with the Government of the Sudan and he is certain the Officer-in-Charge, Taye Zerihoun, will be able to provide this.

Darfur: Pronk to Return to Sudan, Remain Envoy for Rest of the Year

From Reuters

The top U.N. official in Sudan, Jan Pronk, will return to Khartoum and stay in his post through the end of the year, despite the government's announcement he was "history," the United Nations said on Friday.

U.N. chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Kofi Annan "has now confirmed that Jan Pronk will continue to serve as his special representative in the Sudan until the end of the year, when his contract is set to expire."

The Sudanese government had told Annan on Sunday that it considered Pronk's job terminated and wanted him out of the country within three days.

He was ordered out after publishing comments on his personal Web site that the Sudanese army lost two major battles to rebels in the troubled Darfur region and morale was low.

"For us Mr. Pronk is history," Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Mohamad said on Thursday. "He was not supportive, he was abusive and he became part of the problem not the solution."

U.N. officials had insisted that Pronk remained Annan's top envoy to the war-torn nation, but Pronk was called to New York for consultations. He was due to address the Security Council on Friday.

Pronk was expected to return to Khartoum in November "to organize an orderly handover to the officer in charge of the U.N. mission," Dujarric said.

Asked if Sudan had agreed to Pronk's return, Dujarric said: "The dates are being worked out but we do not expect any problems with the scenario we've laid out for you."

Darfur: Open Letter to the American People

A letter from Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer

In an effort to address concerns about U.S. support for AMIS, as expressed by members of the American public, Assistant Secretary Jendayi Frazer offers this open letter in response:

Thank you for your concern regarding U.S. support for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS). I share your deep concern and the concern of the American people for the people of Sudan and am committed to creating lasting peace throughout the country.

The United States is leading the world in responding to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. As Secretary Rice has said, the U.S. calls this tragedy by the only name it deserves: genocide. We are working diligently with the United Nations, the African Union, and our international partners to end the violence, to hold accountable those individuals responsible for atrocities, and to ensure the delivery of humanitarian relief. We are also pressing the Government of Sudan and the non-signatory rebel groups to end the fighting.

President Bush is intensely and personally interested in helping the people of Darfur. He appointed Andrew S. Natsios as his Special Envoy to Sudan on September 19, 2006. Mr. Natsios is familiar with the region and will work closely with the State Department team, led by Secretary Rice and Assistant Secretary Frazer, to strengthen efforts to end the conflict in Darfur and bring peace to all of Sudan.

AMIS recently extended its mandate in Darfur to December 31, 2006. The U.S. Government will continue to support AMIS as it transitions to a larger, more robust U.N. peacekeeping operation. The U.S. has been generous in its support of AMIS thus far, expending nearly $300 million since its inception in 2004. We also continue to work in the U.N. Security Council to ensure implementation of resolution 1706 and to persuade the Government of Sudan to accept the transition to a U.N. force.

Furthermore, the United States is reaching out to non-signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement to encourage them to join the agreement and seek a peaceful solution to the conflict.

The Bush Administration has been leading efforts to end conflict in Sudan for many years. The United States helped broker the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in January 2005 that ended 22 years of civil war. That war took the lives of nearly 2 million and displaced 4 million more.

Ending conflict in Sudan and protecting innocent civilians is one of our highest priorities. We will continue our support to the people of Darfur and all of Sudan until peace is achieved.

Jendayi Frazer,
Assistant Secretary of State
Bureau of African Affairs
Department of State

A related press release from the Genocide Intervention Network

In an “open letter to the American people,” US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer has responded to calls for concrete action on Darfur by pledging to “hold accountable those individuals responsible for atrocities.” The Genocide Intervention Network, which mobilized hundreds of Americans to fax Dr. Frazer’s office with messages supporting increased US involvement in Darfur, welcomes her initiative on this issue.

The Genocide Intervention Network appreciates the United States’ recognition that accountability for genocide will require a “larger, more robust UN peacekeeping operation,” as Dr. Frazer writes. Government-supported militias in Darfur have claimed the lives of 450,000 civilians and displaced 2.5 million people since 2003.

In July, Dr. Frazer told a Darfur donors conference in Brussels that the United States “has been proactive in providing assistance” to the African Union and claimed, “a successful resolution to the situation in Darfur is one of the highest foreign policy priorities for President Bush.” Yet she failed to follow this rhetoric with any pledge of new funds for the African Union — misleadingly claiming funds already appropriated by Congress were a new contribution.

“Unlike her earlier statements, we hope in this case Dr. Frazer’s rhetoric will be followed by action and concrete support for the peacekeepers,” says GI-Net Executive Director Mark Hanis. “At least $240 million from the United States alone will be required to support this vital firebreak against genocide,” Hanis adds. “This is nearly four times current US funding for the African Union peacekeepers.”

Even once the government of Sudan allows the UN peacekeeping force to expand from Southern Sudan into Darfur, a UN force will still take six to nine months to be mobilized.

“The African Union peacekeepers must be strongly supported through the interim — yet the current budget only supports six weeks of AU operations,” Hanis says.

The European Union is also an integral part of the funding for AU peacekeepers, having donated $307 million this year, and the Arab League has pledged to help fund the peacekeeping effort as well.

Ultimately, GI-Net argues, the AU peacekeepers will be unable to stop the genocide, a position Dr. Frazer shares. In August, she said the African Union force was “stretched to the point of breaking,” and conditions have only worsened in the ensuing months. Despite this reality, the African Union is currently Darfurians’ only protection, and should be supported to the fullest extent.

“The United States must ensure the AU force is carrying out its expanded mandate under the Darfur Peace Agreement signed by the government of Sudan, and it must give the African Union the resources to do so,” Hanis says.

The Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in May, authorizes the African Union to establish demilitarized zones around refugee camps, currently the sites of many attacks; maintain demilitarized zones around major roads; verify disarmament of militias; and support efforts to “completely eliminate the threat posed by the Janjaweed/armed militia to the civilian population.”

“We are pleased that Assistant Secretary Frazer has responded to US citizens’ calls for action with a renewed commitment to end the genocide in Darfur,” Hanis says. “We hope this will be followed with concrete action through vigorous financial and logistical support of the interim AU peacekeepers and continued focus on an expanded UN mission.”

Darfur: Sudan Says Pronk is "History"

From Reuters

Sudan's U.N. ambassador on Thursday said the expelled top U.N. envoy in his country, Jan Pronk, was "history" and that the United Nations should send a new representative.

Pronk was recalled to New York for consultations with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whom he met on Thursday, and will address the U.N. Security Council on Friday afternoon.

He was ordered out of Sudan on Sunday after publishing comments on his personal Web site that the Sudanese army lost two major battles to rebels in the Darfur region and morale was low.

"For us Mr. Pronk is history," Sudan's ambassador Abdalmahmood Mohamad told reporters. "He was not supportive, he was abusive and he became part of the problem not the solution."

Sudan's army last week called Pronk, Annan's special representative in Sudan, a threat to the country's national security.

"The Sudanese military is the custodian of the stability and the security of the country. Like any other country, what do you expect the military to do?" Mohamad said.

Although few expect Pronk to return to Khartoum, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the envoy "continues to serve with the full backing of the secretary-general and with his full confidence."

[edit]

Mohamad said Pronk far exceeded his brief. "Is it the mandate of Kofi Annan? Is it the mandate of Mr. Pronk to describe the morale of the army and the operations of the army and the killings of the army?"

From CNN

The Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations lambasted the body's chief envoy to Sudan on Thursday for insulting the country's government and army on a Web blog.

"He abused his authority, his mandate," Abdalmahmood Mohamad said of envoy Jan Pronk.

Pronk "was not faithful to the mandate of the United Nations," Mohamad said. "He lost his impartiality and integrity in the country. He became part of the problem rather than the solution.

"For all these reasons, he left the government with no other choice but to ask for his replacement," Mohamad added.

Mohamad met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday.

[edit]

"The plight of the people in Darfur is the making of the Sudanese," Pronk told CNN Correspondent Jeff Koinange in an interview Wednesday. "The people have been forgotten, neglected, marginalized. The government is responsible for using the army and Arab militia, which kill and kill and do not abide by any rule, let alone human rights rules."

[edit]

"More than 2 million people in camps. You can say that Darfur has been cleansed," Pronk said in the CNN interview. "The international community took action too little and too late."

He added: "For many people, it is too late. They cannot be salvaged anymore because they have been killed, they have raped, atrocities have taken place with impunity in this part of the country."

From IRIN

The Sudanese ambassador to the UN told reporters on Thursday that the head of the United Nations Mission in Sudan, Jan Pronk, who was expelled from the country for remarks in his personal web-blog, had not supported the Khartoum government.

Responding to questions on Pronk's status, Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem said, "He was a failure as far as we are concerned. He was not supportive, he was abusive, he became part of the problem rather than the solution."

Pronk was recalled for consultations in New York on 22 October after a letter from the government of Sudan to the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, requesting that the former Dutch cabinet minister be withdrawn.

[edit]

Abdalhaleem disregarded Pronk's statements, describing them as "not faithful" to the Sudanese army. Pronk’s comments, he said, reflected "things which he heard from some people about imaginary battles that had taken place".

In May, the Sudanese government and one of the leading Darfuri rebel groups signed a peace agreement in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, aimed at ending three years of conflict in Darfur. But other rebel groups have declined to sign up.

Amid speculation that Pronk would have to step down from his role, UN Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday that, as far as the UN was concerned, his status remained unchanged. “Obviously the decision regarding Mr Pronk, as the decision regarding any Special Representative of the Secretary-General, is the Secretary-General's to make," he said.

The expulsion of a top UN official in Sudan comes at a critical time. In August, the UN Security Council agreed to send 17,000 UN troops and 3,000 police to Darfur to take over from an African Union force of 7,500 troops. Sudan’s government has repeatedly rejected this transfer of command to the UN.

Pronk met twice with Annan on Thursday and will be addressing the UN Security Council on Friday afternoon in a closed meeting to discuss his expulsion and action on the ground.

Somalia: In Danger of 'All Out War'

From the AP

Thousands of foreign troops in Somalia could lead to "an all out war" between Somalia's transitional government and an Islamic group that controls much of the country, according to a confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press.

The confidential report, dated October 26, cites diplomatic sources in estimating that "between 6,000-8,000 Ethiopians and 2,000 fully equipped Eritrean troops are now inside Somalia supporting" the internationally recognized government and the Islamic movement.

"Both sides in the Somali conflict are reported to have major outside backers," the report said, saying Ethiopia, Uganda and Yemen supported the government and Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states supported the Islamic movement.

The briefing paper was written to help senior U.N. officials map out a strategy on how to provide aid to one of the most impoverished countries in the world, which has not had an effective central government since 1991.

"In order for us to do this, a clear policy of engagement with the (Islamic movement) must be put in place," the report said. "The fact is that there is new found stability in Mogadishu, extending to areas that they have begun to control, which has not been seen for many years."

One problem facing the United Nations is the listing of the Islamic movement's leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, on a list of people with ties to terrorism. U.N. policy severely restricts how much contact U.N. officials can have with people with alleged ties to terror organizations.

The report was written as both the transitional government and the Islamic movement appeared to be girding for battle. Government forces, supported by Ethiopian military advisers, have been digging trenches near Baidoa, the only town the U.N.-backed government controls.

The Islamic movement has deployed forces at a strategic town between Baidoa, and Mogadishu, 250 kilometers (150 miles) to the southeast.

Ethiopian officials have insisted they have only a few hundred military advisers assisting the government, but international and local officials have put the number into the thousands.

Islamic leaders called for nationwide protests on Friday against Ethiopian troops in Somalia. Some Islamic leaders have called for a holy war against Ethiopia until it pulls its forces out of Somalia.

The Somali transitional government has repeatedly accused Eritrea of arming and supporting their rivals in the Islamic movement, something that both Eritrean and Islamic officials have repeatedly denied.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year border war that remains unresolved and the top U.S. diplomat to Africa, Jendayi Frazer, last week accused Eritrea of using Somalia to open a second front against Ethiopia.

Uganda: Gov't Rejects LRA Call on Troop Deployment

From Reuters

The Ugandan government on Friday rejected a new demand put forward by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army at talks to end one of Africa's longest-running conflicts that have been marred by growing mistrust on both sides.

Ugandan troops will not be confined to camps in south Sudan as requested by the LRA, the government said.

Under a truce signed in August that raised hopes of peace after two decades of war, LRA guerrillas were meant to gather at two locations in southern Sudan while negotiations continued.

But the rebels fled fearing attack by Ugandan soldiers who deployed near the eastern assembly point, and later called for the Ugandans to be withdrawn completely from the south or be confined to designated camps as a confidence building measure.

Ruth Nankabirwa, Uganda's deputy defence minister, said on Friday there was no chance of that.

"The LRA put in a demand that the UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) should assemble. This demand has been rejected," she told a news conference in the capital Kampala.

"It is not going to be part of the cessation of hostilities agreement because there is another agreement with Sudan about the UPDF deployment there."

[edit]

The rebels had wanted Owiny-Ki-Bul, the eastern assembly point, scrapped to let all their fighters gather at the other site near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

Uganda's military says it suspects that demand was a ploy for rebels east of the Nile to join forces with the main guerrilla group in the dense jungles of eastern Congo.

"The LRA requested just one (assembly) point at Ri-Kwangba, but -- this is a must -- the LRA has to assemble in the two assembly points," Nankabirwa reiterated on Friday.

The stop-start talks that began in southern Sudan's capital Juba in July have been characterised by deep mistrust on both sides, and were undermined further last week by the killing of some 40 civilians in ambushes by unknown gunmen south of Juba.

Uganda's military immediately blamed the LRA for the attacks, but on Friday Nankabirwa said "partial investigations" showed other armed groups in the south may have been involved.

"They may be groups that do not want the peace talks to succeed," she said, without giving details. "These could be people who are entrepreneurs of violence. But much as there are other groups in south Sudan, that does not exonerate the LRA."

Chad: Rebels Flee to Safety in Sudan

From Reuters

A rebel convoy which attacked two towns in Chad has fled to Sudan after the army sent troops to face it, Chad's defence minister said on Thursday.

Bichara Issa Djadallah denied reports that Chad had purged the military top brass after the rebels briefly seized the town of Goz Beida near the Sudan border on Sunday and then attacked Am Timan further west as they moved deeper into the country.

President Idriss Deby's government, hit by army defections to the rebels during the last year, said on Wednesday reinforcements were sent to the Am Timan region but the rebels withdrew and government troops retook the town without a fight.

"We entered Am Timan yesterday ... and the rebels fled toward Sudan ... at this time, their first vehicles have already arrived there. We are in pursuit," the minister said.

[edit]

This week's attacks recalled a lightning assault on N'Djamena in April, launched from the east by rebels who raced over the desert in pickup trucks from the Sudan border. Hundreds were killed in the capital before the army took control.

The rebel coalition, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), demands the resignation of Deby, who seized power in a 1990 insurgency and won a new five-year term at elections in May boycotted by the opposition.

The defence minister acknowledged the rebels had "sophisticated arms", pointing to a ground-to-air missile fired at a French military reconnaissance plane on Monday, which missed after the aircraft took precautionary measures.

"That does not change the balance of power. The Chadian army is very solid," he said.

The rebels had clashed with a battalion of the Chadian army at Am Timan before taking control of the town, Djadallah said. He added that casualty figures were not yet available.

Darfur: Khartoum Expels Kofi Annan's Special Representative

The latest from Eric Reeves

A great deal is represented by the extraordinarily arrogant decision on the part of the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum to expel Jan Pronk, who has for more than two years served as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative for Sudan. Most conspicuously, Khartoum has demonstrated yet again its complete contempt for the international community, for the United Nations, and by extension, for the people of Darfur and Southern Sudan. This brazen expulsion demonstrates just how meaningless the authority of UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006) remains---and how far the world is from providing real protection to more than 4 million conflict-affected civilians in Darfur and eastern Chad, and to the increasingly embattled humanitarian aid workers upon whom they depend. The 22,500 troops and civilian police contemplated in Resolution 1706 are no closer to being assembled and deployed today than they were two months ago.

Moreover, the unilateral decision by the National Islamic Front (National Congress Party) to expel Pronk also dangerously exacerbates severe tensions within the notional “Government of National Unity” in Sudan. Indeed, the expulsion order reveals clearly that a genocidal security cabal in Khartoum continues to make all decisions of consequence concerning Darfur, without consultation with or consideration of other political views or constituencies in Sudan:

“The autonomous government of southern Sudan on Sunday denounced Khartoum’s expulsion of UN envoy Jan Pronk, deepening rifts in Sudan’s unity government formed after a north-south peace deal last year. The Government of Southern Sudan [GOSS] said it had not been consulted on Pronk’s expulsion, which it said was a ‘wrong decision’ that could worsen deteriorating conditions in the troubled western Darfur region.”

“And [the GOSS] said the move could hurt the federal administration, created in 2005 between Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir’s ruling National Congress Party and the south’s ex-rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). ‘It is a wrong decision and it is taking Sudan more and more to the brink of confrontation with the international community,’ said Yasir Arman, deputy secretary-general of the SPLM/A.” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Nairobi], October 22, 2006)

At the same time, it must be said that Pronk’s tenure has been marked by egregious errors in judgment, perverse miscalculations, expedient disingenuousness, and a series of decisions that have had disastrous consequences for the international response to massive, ongoing genocidal destruction. He is sharply faulted by many, including many within the UN and the humanitarian community, and his imminent departure (he would not have survived the impending changes within the Secretariat) ensures that he can do no further damage (search “pronk” at www.sudanreeves.org for a series of critiques of Pronk’s performance over the past two and a half years). His expulsion also ensures, however, that there is very likely to be no senior UN diplomatic presence in Sudan, either to help oversee implementation of the north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement (January 2005) or to lend appropriate UN authority to the increasingly endangered humanitarian operations in Darfur. Diplomatic negotiations between the Darfur rebel groups and Khartoum, such as exist, are also now without a readily available, high-level UN interlocutor.

Uganda: What Comes First, Peace or Justice?

An op-ed by Nick Grono of the International Crisis Group in the International Herald Tribune

Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Kony and four of his top commanders. This year Kony and his deputy, Vincent Otti, emerged from the bush for the first time to discuss peace, in talks mediated by the government of Southern Sudan. Their first and oft-repeated demand is that the ICC prosecutions be dropped.

If one accepts that the ICC is the main obstacle to peace - itself a premature judgment - it is difficult to argue that criminal accountability and the need to establish an effective ICC to deter future war criminals should take precedence over the immediate suffering of the northern Ugandans.

On the other hand, it is inconceivable that those directly responsible for these unspeakable crimes should escape being held accountable.

This is the dilemma that must be resolved when all other solutions to the conflict have failed.

The way forward is for the ICC prosecutor to proceed with his prosecutions. He has a mandate and should not be required to make the essentially political judgment of whether the prospects of an uncertain peace should take precedence over justice.

If such a judgment has to be made - and it should only be considered if major peace benefits are highly likely and genuine accountability and reconciliation mechanisms are put in place - then it should be made by the UN Security Council.

The Security Council has a peace and security mandate, and is expressly authorized by the ICC's statute to put prosecutions on hold for a 12-month renewable period.

The talks have a long way to go, but if they reach the stage that peace is likely, the ICC prosecutions should be put on hold to give the millions in northern Uganda a chance to enjoy the peace they have thirsted after for 20 years.

Uganda: Dispute Over Truce Terms Holds Up Peace Talks

From IRIN

Disagreement over the terms of a revised truce accord between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has held up peace talks between the two sides in the southern Sudanese city of Juba, officials said on Thursday.

The LRA has insisted Ugandan troops deployed to southern Sudan either be withdrawn or cantoned, and that rebel forces assemble in only one site, rather than two, near Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to Gen. Wilson Deng, a senior mediator from the southern Sudanese government.

However, the spokesman for the Ugandan government delegation at the talks, Capt Paddy Ankunda, said the new LRA demands were "ambiguous and diversionary" and that the government would reject them.

"Their demand that our troops deployed in Eastern Equatoria [state of southern Sudan] leave or also assemble is unacceptable because they are there under a protocol we signed with the government of Sudan," Ankunda said.

He was referring to a 2002 agreement between Kampala and the Sudanese government allowing Ugandan troops to pursue LRA fighters across the border into Sudan.

The LRA is also rejecting using Owiny Ki-Bul as one of the designated assembly points in Eastern Equatoria because, according to the rebels, there were Ugandan forces in the vicinity. The Ugandan government has denied the accusation.

"They simply want to go to Ri-Kwangba [the other assembly point near the DRC border] as a way of going to their leaders in the DRC, reorganise and resume attacks on civilians from the DRC," Ankunda said. "This will not be allowed to happen. It's unacceptable."

He said the LRA demands were delaying the peace talks.

According to officials close to the mediation, the chief mediator, South Sudan's vice-president, Riek Machar, had presented a compromise proposal to both parties. His plan rejects the LRA demand that Ri-Kwangba be the only gathering site for rebel forces, but also recommends that Ugandan troops withdraw from some areas in southern Sudan, according to the officials. The two sites were agreed on under the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement signed in August.

The Ugandan government had also proposed that the rebels be given seven days to reassemble at their designated areas after signing the revised ceasefire and that the envisaged new arrangement be reviewed every 30 days.

Sudan: United Nations Bulletin 26 Oct 2006

From the United Nations Country Team in Sudan

General:

On 25 October, UN spokesman Stephan Dujarric told journalists the UN protested the Sudanese Government's decision to expel SRSG Pronk. Dujarric said the UN deeply regretted the decision and confirmed that Mr. Pronk remains the Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Sudan, with the full confidence of the Secretary-General. SRSG Pronk will meet with the SG in New York today. Meanwhile in Khartoum, the spokesman for Sudan's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Al Saddiq said that the decision to expel the SRSG was final. The Senior Assistant to the President, Minni Minnawi of the Sudan Liberation Movement, described the GoNU decision as "inauspicious".

Chad’s Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi summoned Sudan’s ambassador on 25 October to demand an explanation after rebels briefly seized two towns in the southeast of Chad. Sudan is accused of backing the insurgency in Chad. Sudan's Minister of Interior, Dr. Zubeir Bashir said during a visit to Darfur State, that the Government would consolidate its police presence along the Chad-Sudan border. Separately, Zubeir also said that the Government is ready to expel any organization in Darfur that violates its mandate.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper on 25 October, President al-Bashir said that Sudan is willing to accept a large increase in the number of foreign peacekeepers in Darfur with a stronger mandate to protect civilians, as long as they remain under African Union control. He suggested that the force could be given logistical help by European and Arab countries.

According to local media, a senior official of the SLM-Abdul Wahid faction welcomed the Eritrean initiative to mediate between the Sudanese Government and non- DPA signatories, but said participation would be conditional on the involvement of Chad.

Presidential Adviser, Dr Mustafa Osman Ismail said that the negotiation team of the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement (ESPA) would make a field tour of eastern Sudan in the coming days to brief national and state executive and legislative bodies on the agreement. Dr. Mustafa described the ESPA as a reflection of the national will and expressed commitment to its full implementation.

UNMIS Military

CRITICAL INCIDENTS

In Central Equatoria, a Joint Monitoring Team (JMT) was not allowed by the Deputy Commander of the 1st Joint Integrated Unit (JIU) Division in Juba to inspect 100 boxes of TNT explosives that were received by SAF on 12 October. The Deputy Commander explained that the TNT would be used to demolish obsolete ammunition while the boxes would be used as firewood.

Khartoum and Northern Sudan: NSTR

North Darfur

Security:

On 23 October, fighting between SAF and the NRF continued in North Darfur.

Civil Affairs:

On 23 October, the Governor of North Darfur attempted to attend the Eid prayer in the Abu Shouk IDP Camp after being invited by one of the Umdas who is a member of the NCP. The IDPs began to leave the area when the Governor arrived. When the IDPs were called back by the Umda, the Umda was beaten and injured. Rocks were thrown at the Governor’s vehicle when he was leaving with his convoy to El Fasher. Contrary to actual events, the local radio announced that the Governor addressed the IDPs during the Eid prayer in the Abu Shouk IDP camp.

On 24 October, all 18 Umdas from the Abu Shouk IDP Camp were summoned to the Governor of North Darfur’s residence. The Governor accused them of mobilizing the IDPs against the State Government, supporting UN SCR 1706 and the armed movements. The Governor indicated that the Umdas’ activities would be monitored and that security measures would be reinforced in the camp to maintain state sovereignty.

The Umdas expressed their fear to UNMIS that they would be followed by National Security, and requested the UN to provide them protection from any harassment.

South Darfur

Security:

On 25 October, five SLA/MM soldiers were found stabbed to death by unknown armed men at a check point at the north eastern entry point into Gereida (105 km South of Nyala).

On 24 October, seventeen unidentified dead bodies were found lying along the railway line at Chirum (80 km Southeast of Nyala). No further details are available.

On 25 October, a group of armed men ambushed a commercial vehicle carrying humanitarian supplies in Yassin (85 km Southeast of Nyala). The armed men threatened the driver and diverted the truck off the main road. The armed men abandoned the truck when it got stuck in the mud.

On 25 October, a convoy of two vehicles belonging the Water, Environment and Sanitation (WES) organization was reported missing. The convoy with five national staff departed Nyala for Saleah (45 km Northwest of Ed Deain) to assess the water and sanitation situation due to the influx of IDPs from Muhajeria.

On 25 October, three armed men ambushed two INGO vehicles in Um Tierti (near Yasin, 96 km Southeast of Nyala). The armed men inspected all the documents of the vehicles including the ID Cards of the national staff. They then stole the vehicles, over US$1,500.00 and medical supplies. The staff safely returned to Saniafundu (75 km Southeast of Nyala). Upon request by the INGO, UNDSS organized the security evacuation of nine INGO staff members to Nyala.

West Darfur : NSTR

Southern Sudan

Civil Affairs:

On 25 October, UNMIS in Juba visited Gumbo village where recent attacks resulted in the loss of lives and property. Many families moved across the Nile into Juba for refuge. The Parish Priest in Gumbo said the area is unpredictable, and that many NGOs are leaving. On returning from the mission, the UNMIS vehicle was stopped by two men armed with sticks at the outskirts of Juba, near the bridge over the Nile (Juba-Torit road). The two men demanded money. One of the men said that the UN vehicle was bought from their oil money which the UN and government leaders were enjoying. There are increasing incidents of harassment of UN personnel in the South by both civilians and the SPLA.

Darfur: Expulsion Exposes Fragile Coalition

From Reuters

With a myriad of regional peace deals under his belt, Sudan's president proudly touts his coalition government with former enemies in senior posts as a model of reconciliation and power-sharing.

But a series of moves culminating in the expulsion of top U.N. envoy Jan Pronk has left the former rebels who are now part of Sudan's government wondering if they have any real say over policy in Africa's largest country.

"This decision puts Sudan closer to the brink of confrontation with the international community," said Yasir Arman, spokesman for the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Both the SPLM and former rebels from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region who are now part of a coalition government with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's dominant National Congress Party say they were not consulted on the expulsion, and opposed it.

Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP) expelled Pronk after he wrote that the Sudanese armed forces had lost two major battles against Darfur rebels, morale was low, generals had been sacked and soldiers were refusing to fight.

The move has highlighted fissures in the fragile ruling coalition in a country already divided, often along ethnic and religious lines, after multiple rebellions.

Both southern and western former rebels control a small percentage of Sudan's ministries, a few top posts and some other government positions under peace deals signed with Khartoum.

The SPLM became a major partner in government after a 2005 north-south peace accord to end Africa's longest civil war, and a former Darfur rebel group joined this year after signing a peace deal with Khartoum.

But key posts are still held by Bashir's NCP, which uses its majority in parliament and government to dominate decision-making.

The leader of the only one of three negotiating rebel factions to sign the Darfur peace deal, Minni Arcua Minnawi, is now the fourth-ranking official in Sudan.

But his former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) said it was not consulted about the move to expel Pronk, which has serious implications for U.N.-Sudanese relations.

"Any decision against (Pronk)... should have be done after a wider consultation within the government of national unity," said Mohamed Bashir, head of Minnawi's office.

A source close to Pronk said he was reassured by a foreign ministry official that the affair would blow over, only to be summoned by that same junior minister, Ali Karti, two days later to be given 72 hours to leave the country.

Karti, a member of Bashir's party, remains technically subordinate to Foreign Minister Lam Akol of the SPLM.

Outside government ranks, Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said the expulsion proved the government was as dominated by the military as it was when it took over in a 1989 bloodless coup.

"This decision is one made by the army not by the government," Ibrahim told Reuters.

[edit]

Some say the United Nations is unlikely to take hard action against the government, for fear of collapsing peace deals which took years of painstaking negotiation to achieve.

"They are not going to push the government and threaten the (southern) agreement," one Western diplomat in Khartoum said.

Southern and Darfur former rebels have questioned whether there is a real coalition when the NCP still dominates decision-making, but both have so far refrained from threatening to pull out of government or back out on peace deals.

Darfur: Head-to-Head

Excerpts from a debate between Gamal Nkrumah, the foreign editor of the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, and Eric Reeves - from the BBC

Gamal Nkrumah, Cairo, Egypt

The phrase "international community" is often used as a euphemism for the United States and other Western powers' political agendas. Non-consensual deployment of foreign, non-African troops, is a non-starter.

It is an act of aggression that infringes on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sudan.

As stipulated by Resolution 1706, the deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops must have prior and explicit approval of the Sudanese authorities. Previous US-led military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq have aggravated the situation in the respective countries. The worse scenario is for Darfur to denigrate further into an Iraqi or Afghan quagmire.

The only way forward is to strengthen the African Union peacekeeping contingency in Darfur in both financial and logistical terms.

Eric Reeves, Massachusetts, US

The international community, as represented in Resolution 1706, has implicitly but clearly recognised the radical inability of the African Union force in Darfur.

No conceivable augmentation of the AU can possibly staunch the flow of genocidal violence in Darfur, protect the more than four million conflict-affected persons in this vast region (including eastern Chad), or provide the protection necessary for the humanitarian operations upon which this desperate population depends - operations that are now collapsing ("in free fall" was how they were described by UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland a month ago).

Although 1706 "invites" Khartoum's consent, it does not require it.

While 1706 explicitly guarantees the Sudan's national sovereignty, it was passed under Chapter VII authority and confers enforcement authority upon a deploying force. What is required is not Khartoum's consent but the international will to accept unambiguously the "responsibility to protect" civilians threatened by genocide, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity - a responsibility unanimously accepted by the UN at its World Summit in September 2005 and explicitly reaffirmed by the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1674 (April 2006).

Gamal Nkrumah, Cairo, Egypt

The international community would serve the interests of the people of Darfur if wealthier countries - oil-rich Gulf Arab, Western and Japan - treble humanitarian relief assistance, development aid and step up medical and relief supplies in the short term.

In the longer term, trade and development aid, including investments in medical and educational services, would be vital.

Also of paramount importance is improved logistical and financial support for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur.

[edit]

I suspect, though, that oil and not human rights are the main motivation behind the heightened interest of US President George W Bush in Sudan.

It is Sudan's oil, like Iraq's oil, which fuels American interest in Sudan.

Moreover, it is oil which is strengthening Sudan's international position. UN Security Council permanent member China, for example, which imports 6% of its oil from Sudan, will veto any anti-Sudan sanctions.

The Sudanese authorities capitalise upon Chinese support.

[edit]

Chad, Darfur's neighbour to the immediate West has huge oil reserves, there is no doubt that there are oil reserves in Darfur itself. The Chinese and TotalFinaElf of France know all too well that the potential for exploiting Darfur's oil in commercial quantities is tremendous.

The US is most concerned about the Chinese, other Asian and French monopoly of Sudanese oil.

Darfur is of great strategic importance it straddles Libya, Egypt, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

Sudan has accepted African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur. So it is best for all concerned if AU troops are deployed to keep the peace in Darfur.

The AU troops, however, must have financial and logistical support from the UN and Western powers as well as oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. Only then will peace prevail in Darfur.

Eric Reeves, Massachusetts, US

There is no evidence of oil in Darfur.

Reserves in more westerly parts of Chad tell us nothing about Darfur; there is no geologic evidence, no seismic data - nothing that indicates there is oil in Darfur.

But there is a terrifyingly great deal of evidence about the scale of human destruction that will ensue if we do not respond urgently to the acute lack of human security.

With or without Khartoum's consent, the international community must uphold its "responsibility to protect civilians" in Darfur - civilians not simply unprotected by the National Islamic Front/National Congress regime - but targets of an ongoing genocidal campaign orchestrated in Khartoum.

Such "responsibility to protect" supersedes claims of national sovereignty. This principle was the explicit conclusion of the UN World Summit Outcome Document, paragraph 139, unanimously adopted in September 2005.

The AU is simply incapable of being transformed into a force that can take up this responsibility with sufficient urgency; it cannot possibly become the force contemplated in UN Security Council Resolution 1706.

To pretend otherwise is the treat with a scandalous moral carelessness the lives of more than four million conflict-affected Darfuris.

Gamal Nkrumah, Cairo, Egypt

The interests of the US should not be confused with the interests of the international community. It is clear that the aggression against Iraq was a pretext to control the vast oil reserves of that country.

Human rights and democratisation had nothing to do with the Bush administration's aims.

Abu Ghraib and numerous other atrocities committed against the people of Iraq clearly demonstrated that the US is not interested in the welfare of the people of Iraq. Neither is the Bush administration interested in the welfare of the people of Darfur.

The main goal of the Bush administration, with its extensive oil interests, is to challenge Chinese oil interests and economic clout in Sudan.

The so-called "international peacekeeping force" is a euphemism for foreign military intervention which is destined to have disastrous repercussions for the people of Darfur and Sudan as a whole.

The US must stay out of Darfur.

Eric Reeves, Massachusetts, US

To invoke Iraq and Abu Ghraib when the issue clearly is saving lives in Darfur is disingenuous.

That Iraq was a terribly misconceived debacle that will haunt US foreign policy for years could not be clearer; but this doesn't diminish in the slightest the extraordinarily urgent need for international protection of the more than four million human beings the UN estimates are affected by genocidal conflict in Darfur and eastern Chad.

Just as urgent is the protection of those aid operations upon which this vast population grows increasingly dependent: humanitarian access shrinks almost daily, with many hundreds of thousands of Darfuris completely beyond the reach of food and medical assistance, living without adequate clean water or shelter.

Khartoum continues its large military offensives in North and West Darfur, and in such a context the African Union force currently deployed, even if augmented, is simply incapable of providing protection to the civilian and humanitarian populations.

UN Security Council Resolution 1706, which Khartoum defiantly rejects, provides an appropriate international force of 22,500 troops and civilian police, as well as a strong civilian protection mandate.

This force must deploy with or without Khartoum's consent, with whatever additional forces are required if consent is denied.

The alternative is to watch from afar as - in the words of UN humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland, "the lives of hundreds of thousands could be needlessly lost."

Gamal Nkrumah, Cairo, Egypt

The ongoing aggression of the Sudanese authorities against innocent civilians is deplorable. However, a Western, US and Nato-led military intervention to end the Darfur crisis would have the opposite and extremely negative impact on a volatile region.

The fighting in Darfur cannot be seen in isolation of the wider regional context.

The arid Sahel region of Africa, and Darfur is very much a part of the Sahel, has witnessed a scramble over meagre resources especially between nomadic, mainly but not exclusively, Arab tribes and pastoralists with non-Arab agriculturalists, and has become endemic in the area.

The crisis-ridden region of the Sahel is a political powder-keg.

Western intervention would exacerbate matters.

In Niger ethnic Arabs, known as the Mahamid, have recently been threatened with deportation. In neighbouring Chad, the authorities have accused Khartoum of supporting the armed opposition groups including the Union of forces for Democracy and Development.

The only way forward is to strengthen the AU forces by logistical and financial support on a massive scale.

Darfur: Pronk's Expulsion No Surprise Say Aid Workers

A post by Jonathan Erasmus - via POTP

Sudan's decision to kick out top United Nations envoy Jan Pronk came as no big surprise to many aid workers in Darfur who complain of regular harassment from the government.

They say Sudan's intimidation tactics towards Pronk echo some of the problems non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have faced.

Aid workers I've spoken to say persistent harassment has been hampering aid efforts throughout the region, compounding the suffering of millions of displaced Darfuris.

Pronk was forced to leave after Sudan accused him of trying to "wage psychological war against the armed forces" through remarks in his personal blog.

"Jan Pronk has always been a thorn in the Sudanese government's side because he tells people in the international community what is really going on in Darfur," the operations director of a major aid agency told me.

"He said the peace agreement has not been implemented on the ground, and it hasn't. He said peace negations didn't involve representatives of the groups fighting in Darfur and they didn't. His latest comments on the Sudanese army being low on moral following heavy losses fighting against rebel militias also ring true."

The operations director did not want to be named in case it jeopardised his organisation's work, but his comments were echoed by other aid workers I spoke to.

"The government here don't want people to know what is happening," he added.

I have been made more than aware on my various visits that censorship is a big issue in Sudan.

"They want total control," the operations director told me. "And like they no longer want Mr Pronk in Sudan, the Sudanese government seem not to want NGOs here either, especially not Darfur. As a result, our workers have been hindered and harassed just like Mr Pronk is being harassed now."

Another aid worker I talked to accused the government of ethnic cleansing and suggested the government has been trying to hamper aid agencies' work so that more Darfuris died from disease and starvation. Khartoum denies allegations of ethnic cleansing.

But the aid worker said it was well documented that the government had been attacking villages with helicopter gunships and bomber planes. He also believed the government had been arming the Janjaweed militia, who are behind a wave of killing, rape and looting.

"I have been here for over two years and from what I've seen the government has been running a campaign of ethnic cleansing for almost three years. Of course it is harassing," said the aid worker, who asked not to be named to avoid reprisals against his organisation.

"The NGOs are in Darfur trying to save the lives of the Darfuris the government has been attacking and killing. The less effective the NGOs are the more successful the campaign of ethnic cleansing becomes, because the people of Darfur will die through starvation and the spread of diseases," he added.

Khartoum denies any alliance with the Janjaweed and says it is in favour of disarming them.

But the aid worker said the Sudanese government said one thing on a political level and did another on the ground.

"I have seen no change since the DPA (Darfur Peace Agreement)," he added. "Jan Pronk is right, it has simply not been implemented by the government of Sudan."

[edit]

Aid agencies, who are dealing with what the United Nations describes as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis", say their lives are made far more difficult by government bureaucracy.

According to the organisation Human Rights Watch, Khartoum has tried to intimidate humanitarian relief agencies in Darfur by arbitrarily detaining aid workers.

The organisation reports that earlier this year Sudanese National Security held at least 20 aid workers from seven NGOs for four months.

But it says agencies don't report events such as these because they fear further reprisals from the government against their staff, operations and the people they serve.

Chad: Rebels on the Rocky Road to N’djamena

From IRIN

In interviews with journalists, rebel spokespeople rarely express goals except kicking Deby out, but the political wings of the rebel groups have still cooked up an alphabet soup of acronyms as they chop and change their groups’ names and try to reconcile their political and military interests.

The Union of Forces for Democracy (UFD), said by analysts to be a coalition of three groups is the current forerunner, has claimed responsibility for this week’s attacks.

Rebel leaders are cagey about their strength or backing, making definitive figures hard to come by. Deby has accused Khartoum of providing the rebels with direct support. Khartoum has denied the accusation, and accused Chad of being sympathetic to rebel groups opposed to it.

Chad and Sudan signed accords in July and October pledging to expel rebels from their territories and protect their shared border.

The rebels have largely kept civilians out of their fight with the government. Civilian deaths and injuries have been low in the dozen skirmishes this year.

However, human rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and senior United Nations officials, have said the Chad government’s preoccupation with its own survival has left it unable - or unwilling - to protect the border.

In the military vacuum, attacks by militias from Darfur have become commonplace. More than 55,000 Chadian civilians in the east of the country have fled their homes this year, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

Diplomats say it is the uncertainty about how a divided rebellion would unite and then govern the vast and extremely poor country that borders Cameroon, Central African Republic, Libya, Sudan, and Niger that makes the rebels a threat to regional peace.

Chad/Darfur: Sudan Is Arming Rebels

From the New York Times

The Chadian government on Wednesday accused Sudan of supplying rebel groups seeking to overthrow President Idriss Déby with weapons and providing them cover to operate in Sudanese territory.

The accusation, made by government and military officials as a rebel group moved toward the capital, heightened the already tense relations between the neighboring countries. They have been at odds over the rebellion in Darfur, which Sudan accuses Chad’s government of supporting.

“These rebels entered Chad from Sudan, and they could only have procured this type of military equipment within the sight of and with the knowledge of the Sudanese authorities,” the Chadian foreign minister, Ahmar Allami, told Agence France-Presse. “Sudan cannot deny it.”

Lt. Col. Mahamat Hassane, a spokesman for the Chadian military, said the rebel group had reached the provincial town of Am Timan, but had not gone any further.

The loose coalition of several rebel factions opposed to Mr. Déby’s government have advanced from the eastern part of the country toward the capital, but appear to have stalled. The government has sent reinforcements to Mongo, hoping to prevent the rebels from marching into the capital.

Government officials and diplomats feared a replay of the coup attempt in April, when hundreds of troops drove across the eastern scrubland into Ndjamena, and fierce firefights broke out. About 300 people were killed in the fighting, though the coup attempt failed.

In the current standoff, there have been no confrontations between the rebels and the army. The rebel group has occupied at least two towns, but their location, the size of their force and their intentions remain unclear. The group appears to be well armed — it fired a SAM-7 ground-to-air missile at a French military plane, according to the French government, but did not hit it.

From Reuters

Chad said on Wednesday it had pushed back a rebel convoy which attacked two towns in the country's remote southeast and accused neighbouring Sudan of backing the insurgency.

Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi summoned Sudan's ambassador to demand an explanation after the rebels briefly seized Goz Beida near the Sudan border on Sunday then attacked Am Timan further west as they moved deeper into the country.

"Having signed agreements to normalise our relations, we cannot understand how Sudan can send over motorised rebel columns with sophisticated weaponry," Allam-Mi said.

"We favour dialogue. We can still meet to resolve this problem," he said, but added: "Chad will protect itself against any acts or low blows that Sudan deals us."

Chad's government said army reinforcements had been sent to the region around Am Timan but that the rebels had withdrawn without putting up a fight. Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said Am Timan was now under government control.

Fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2003 and displaced more than two million, has often spilled over into arid, oil-producing Chad.

President Idriss Deby has repeatedly accused Khartoum of backing the rebels, saying Sudan's Arab government was trying to export its "fundamentalist system" to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Sudan denies the charge.

"There is absolutely no support from the government of Sudan to any rebels," a Sudanese army spokesman said, but noted the border between the two countries was porous.

"It is entirely possible that rebels can enter the border and attack from Sudan as rebels enter and attack the Sudanese armed forces from Chadian territories," he said.

The army bolstered security in N'Djamena on Tuesday as the rebels appeared to be advancing across the mostly desert country. But the dusty city was calm on Wednesday, with a lone tank guarding the presidential palace.

The attacks recalled a lightning assault on N'Djamena in April, launched from the east by rebels who raced across the desert in pick-up trucks from the Sudan border. Several hundred people were killed in the capital before the army took control.

A leader of the rebel coalition, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), said late on Tuesday its fighters would not advance immediately from the area around Am Timan, some 600 km (370 miles) east of N'Djamena.

Diplomats and government officials said the rebels appeared to be playing a game of cat and mouse, as they did in April, launching small-scale strikes on poorly fortified towns in the former French colony in order to disorientate the armed forces.

"This rebel column has been reluctant to engage the security forces, instead infiltrating a locality then pulling back so as to make the local and international community believe they occupy territory inside the country," Doumgor said.

He said the rebels were using sophisticated weaponry, pointing to a ground-to-air missile fired at a French military reconnaissance plane on Monday, which missed after the aircraft took "precautionary measures".

Darfur: Khartoum Says Pronk Not Welcome Back

From AFP

Sudan will not have any further dealings with expelled UN envoy Jan Pronk, regardless of what the United Nations may decide about his future, a senior official said Thursday.

"The decision to expel Jan Pronk is irrevocable because of positions he has taken that are incompatible with his mission in Sudan," foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadek told journalists.

"It is a decision of state and of the government that is not concerned with what the United Nations decides."

However, the Sudanese Liberation Movement, a government partner and ex-rebel signatory to the Darfur peace accord signed in May, expressed concern that Pronk's expulsion could make matters worse.

The SLM faction, headed by Minni Minnawi, a senior aide to President Omar al-Beshir, issued a statement describing the decision as "unfortunate at a time when the government is at a crossroads in UN relations."

The move was likely to "exacerbate an already complicated situation," said the SLM, adding that despite its own reservations about Pronk's behavior, it would have preferred to have been consulted before the decision was made.

[edit]

Sudanese Minister Lam Akol has written to Annan demanding that he appoint a new envoy for Sudan.

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Annan agreed Wednesday on the need to send a special UN envoy back to Sudan, but Washington did not suggest demanding that the Sudan accept the return of Pronk.

"She and Secretary General Annan agreed on the importance of that function continuing to be performed on behalf of the UN in Sudan," spokesman Sean McCormack said.

"Whether or not to send Mr Pronk himself back or send somebody else in that post is up to Mr Annan."

Darfur: UN's Ziegler Calls for Intervention

From Swissinfo

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Switzerland's Jean Ziegler, has demanded the UN intervene in western Sudan's Darfur.

Ziegler, presenting his annual report in New York, said that the war-torn region represented the worst current humanitarian crisis.

The Geneva sociologist added that the UN had the right to intervene to help local populations without the authorisation of the Sudanese government. Ziegler, who has yet to travel to Darfur, said this was the only way of setting up proper and secure humanitarian corridors.

The UN rapporteur recalled that during its recent conflict with Lebanon's Hezbollah militia Israel had cut off humanitarian corridors, thereby setting a bad example for others to follow.

Ziegler said Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, was doing the same to hinder aid arriving in Darfur. Eight UN humanitarian workers were killed in the region this summer.

DRC: Election Unlikely to End Country's Woes

From Reuters

The son of a slain president and a former warlord on Sunday fight an election for control of Congo, potentially one of Africa's richest countries but a byword for violence, corruption and kleptocracy.

Most of the 60 million population of Democratic Republic of Congo are desperate for peace and reconstruction after decades of chaos and a 1998-2003 war that led to the deaths of 4 million people, a number that dwarfs even the Iraq conflict.

Around 1,200 people are estimated to still be dying every day in the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the war.

But few analysts believe the second-round election run-off between incumbent president Joseph Kabila and former rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba will bring swift relief to the population.

In fact tension is so high after a series of clashes between supporters of the two men around the country that fear and intimidation have muted campaigning for the second round.

The first round on July 30 was considered a remarkable achievement considering the enormous logistical challenges of organising a poll in a country with hardly any roads and little electricity. Turnout was around 70 per cent.

With 45 percent of first round votes, Kabila is epxected to win. The result has served to solidify rather than dissipate ethnic hatreds and splits between the president's Swahili-speaking east and Bemba's Lingala-speaking West.

In the teeming riverside capital, a Bemba stronghold, many of the 8 million population express hatred for Kabila, accusing him of selling Congo's rich mineral assets and of being a foreigner, because he grew up in Tanzania.

"We need to get rid of Kabila because he has done nothing for this country. He is Tanzanian. He is stupid," said street boy Herman Mawisa, yelling to make his voice heard over a chorus of abuse for the president from a dozen other Bemba supporters.

Bemba supporters also attack Kabila for the way he became president after his father Laurent was murdered by a bodyguard in 2001, almost four years after he overthrew dictator Mobutu Sese Seko -- notorious for systematically looting Congo's vast mineral riches during his 32-year rule.

"We don't need a Kabila kingdom in which when the father dies we get the son," said civil servant Emmanuel Isangya.

He warned of civil war if Kabila won. "It is because of him that this country is such a mess," he said.

Thousands of miles away in the east of this vast country -- 80 times larger than former colonial master Belgium -- support for Kabila is just as palpable.

"All the work Kabila did in bringing peace and ending the war shows he is the only leader for this country," said Delphin Jakatumbu, a security guard in Kalemie, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika."

In Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga province, billboards advertising Bemba's campaign have been vandalised everywhere and Kabila supporters on Tuesday attacked a rival rally, burning down the podium and beating up Bemba supporters, residents said.

These hatreds have raised fears of serious violence during or after the poll and diplomats worry that the slightest spark could set the two sides at each other's throats.

Rwanda: France to Help Genocide Inquiry

From the BBC

France says it will co-operate with an inquiry in Rwanda into allegations that French forces were involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

A commission in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, has started hearing witnesses in public this week on the issue.

A French defence ministry spokesman told the BBC that the testimony of two army officers would be made available.

France has denied playing any role in the 100-day frenzy of killing in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.

The panel, whose hearings are being broadcast live on local radio, is hearing from 25 survivors of the genocide, who claim to have witnessed French involvement.

After the testimonies, the Rwandan panel will rule on whether to file a suit at the International Court of Justice.

"Two officers have been requested to testify by Rwandan officials and as we do with the international courts we shall organise this," Jean Francois Bureau, spokesman for French defence minister, told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

French soldiers were deployed in parts of Rwanda in the final weeks of the genocide under a United Nations mandate to set up a protected zone.

Rwanda says the soldiers allowed Hutu extremists to enter Tutsi camps.

But Mr Bureau says there is no evidence to support these accusations.

The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in Kigali says that it is also alleged that French soldiers provided escape routes to militia escaping to the Democratic Republic of Congo after the massacres.

Meanwhile, in France a military tribunal is currently investigating claims by six Rwandans who filed a case accusing French troops of facilitating the massacres.

From AFP

French troops in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide trained Rwandan soldiers and militia responsible for most of the killings and joked with them, an government inquiry commission heard on Wednesday.

Rwanda's Tutsi President Paul Kagame, whose government came to power after the genocide, has accused France of training and arming Hutu militias who were the main force behind a 100-day slaughter that killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

France had replaced ex-colonial power Belgium as Rwanda's main Western backer. When Kagame's Tutsi-dominated rebel army launched its war against the Hutu authorities in the early 1990s, France sent soldiers to Kigali.

France helped stop the advance of Kagame's forces and then stayed on, as military advisers, up to the start of the genocide.

Kigali says France backed the government of Rwanda's former President Juvenal Habyarimana, providing military training for government forces, despite knowing that some within the leadership were planning to use the troops to commit genocide.

Darfur: Interview With al-Bashir

From the Guardian

Q: Sudan rejects UN resolution 1706. The United States is insisting on it. Do you see any possible compromise to end the deadlock?

A: We adopt an open mind and a flexible attitude: let us respect the DPA and keep the mandate to the AU. If this particular provision of the agreement is met, defining the role of the UN would be feasible. For instance, we have recently agreed to a request by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, to send support from the UN to Amis in the form of experts, equipment and logistics.

Q: Would you be willing to accept a new security council resolution under chapter eight of the UN charter, whereby the UN gave the AU a mandate to continue its current peace-keeping role? Would you allow the AU to increase its troop numbers to as many as 20,000 and receive logistical support from European countries?

A: Regarding the second part of your question, we have no objection to the AU increasing its troops, strengthening its mandate, or receiving logistical support from the EU, the UN, or the Arab League for that matter, but this must, of course, be done in consultation with the government of national unity (GNU). As to the chapter eight option, we haven't received such an offer and we haven't thought of it.

Q: Sudan has accepted UN peacekeepers for south Sudan. Why do you consider a similar mission in Darfur unacceptable? What is the difference?

A: First, legally, the resolution does not stand on terra firma. The comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) with the south places the responsibility of the implementation of the agreement with the UN, which was a provision agreed to by the two parties. This is not the case in the Darfur [peace] agreement (DPA), which states expressly that the African Union is tasked with the implementation of the agreement; again, this was agreed and attested to, not only by the signatories, but also by the AU mediators, the UN, the EU, etc. Political correctness demands that we should all respect our agreements.

Second, there is a basic difference between the CPA and the DPA. The former involves self-determination, meaning that, theoretically, the south could secede and become a separate country. Now, why would someone want to bind, in one resolution, a potentially separable part of the country to another part which is integral to that country? Why should we lump two distinctly separate cases in one package? Unfortunately, this is the mistake which the sponsors of the 1706 resolution have committed when they extended the mandate of the UN forces in the south, pursuant to the CPA, to Darfur; by so doing they have tampered with the CPA without the consent of the signatories.

Third, the Darfur problem has always had a strong local element presenting itself sometimes in the form of lethal rivalry between different tribes at one time, and herders and farmers at another. For right or wrong, some of the locals do not view the UN troops kindly, which raises the eventuality of such troops becoming target to their attacks, that is, becoming part of the conflict not the solution.

Fourth, we take exception to not being consulted before the resolution was passed. The UN is a membership organization in which members have equal rights and duties. We know it is a theoretical equality, but at least we should have been granted the apparent dignity of being consulted in such a matter of vital importance to our interests.

Q: The displaced people in the camps in Darfur seem to have little confidence in the goodwill of the Sudanese government. What can be done to convince them that the government is able to protect them?

A: Start implementing the agreement, pure and simple. The agreement recognises these difficulties, and many more others, and caters for them. The government would not deal with the IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the absence of observers; certainly not in the absence of the other signatories, which means that every step in the implementation, including the security arrangements part, would be carried out transparently. For instance, the agreement provides for the deployment of integrated police units in the IDP camps, as a confidence building measure. Members of these units would be drawn from among forces belonging to government, as well as to the other signatories to the agreement.

Q: When will the government start implementing its policy of helping IDPs to return home, perhaps by starting with pilot schemes which provide joint Amis/GOS (government of Sudan) protection as people rebuild their villages in those areas which are secure? Or is there nowhere in Darfur which is currently safe enough for people to return to?

A: There are many areas in Darfur which are safe for the return and resettlement of the IDPs. Although this issue has become politicised and, as a result, there are elements inside and outside the camps resisting any such effort, the government of southern Darfur has already carried out many resettlement programmes, successfully.

Q: What concessions are you offering the non-signatories to the Darfur peace agreement to persuade them to come on board? Could there be an addendum to the DPA? How much more compensation are you willing to give the IDPs beyond the $30m already announced?

A: Indeed, one of our main preoccupations for the next phase is to bring all on board. I would rather not preempt the discussions, though, on what can and what cannot be offered. The principle we insist on is that whatever we agree on must be reconcilable with the DPA and the interests of those who already signed. We wouldn't want those who signed to exchange seats with those who didn't. As to the compensations, the agreement states that the $30m is only the first installment payable by the government. We can discuss how much more can be paid. In addition, the international community must come forward on this. We suggest that at least some of the $1.7bn projected to fund the proposed UN troops according to Resolution 1706 be diverted to the compensation fund.

Q: How optimistic are you that the rebel movements will stop fighting and make an agreement with the government?

A: I am confident that this problem will run its course and wind up one day. It is our duty though, pending that, to spare our people the suffering and to speed up the process of healing, which we are striving to do.

Q: High-level visitors from the UK and the US were recently in Khartoum. What would you like the UK and the US to do about Darfur?

A: Help us implement the agreement. If they cannot, or if they have their priorities elsewhere, at least they could relieve us from the distraction caused by applying pressure the way it is being applied now, to the wrong party at the wrong time.

The Guardian also has this related story

Sudan is willing to accept a large increase in the number of foreign peacekeepers in Darfur with a stronger mandate to protect civilians, as long as they remain under African Union control, President Omar al-Bashir has told the Guardian.

The force could have logistical help from European and Arab countries, he added, warning that any UN attempt to impose foreign troops could lead to "such troops becoming a target of attacks and part of the conflict, not the solution".

[edit]

In his first interview since the diplomatic missions, Mr al-Bashir refused to give ground. Denying reports that the Arab League had suggested he accept troops from Arab or Muslim countries outside Africa, he insisted any non-African help for the AU be confined to equipment and logistics.

Asked if the AU could double its troop strength to 20,000, the president said: "We have no objection to the AU increasing its troops, strengthening its mandate, or receiving logistical support from the EU, the UN, or the Arab League for that matter, but this must of course be done in consultation with the government of national unity."

[edit]

Mr al-Bashir, who took power in a coup in 1989, said he "recognised" that refugees had little trust in his government. This was why the peace deal stipulated that security must be overseen by outside observers and provided jointly with the rebel movements, he said. There would be "integrated police units" to protect refugees in their camps and on their return home.

But he accused rebels who failed to sign the deal of stopping refugees from returning to rebuild their villages. He offered no motive for this alleged obstruction. Other Sudanese officials claim it is for propaganda purposes, to maintain a humanitarian crisis and keep the focus on Darfur.

"There are many areas in Darfur which are safe for the return and resettlement of the internally displaced people. Although this issue has become politicised and as a result there are elements inside and outside the camps resisting any such effort, the government of southern Darfur has already carried out many resettlement programmes successfully," he said.

Sudan accepted a 10,000-strong UN force to monitor a peace deal with rebels in south Sudan last year. Western governments which sponsored the latest UN resolution want this extended to Darfur. But Mr al-Bashir insisted the two issues were separate, since the south Sudan deal allowed for a referendum on secession, something Darfurians had never asked for.

Western governments agree that all rebel groups must sign the peace deal. Mr al-Bashir urged Britain and the US to stop "applying pressure [on Khartoum] the way it is being done now - to the wrong party at the wrong time".

He refused to say what concessions he might offer to persuade rebels to sign, but warned there was a danger that if too much was offered, the group led by Minni Minnawi (which signed the deal) could walk out: "We wouldn't want those who signed to exchange seats with those who did not." Mr Minnawi was made a special assistant to President al-Bashir in August, making him nominally the fourth most powerful person in Sudan. Some rebel leaders have said there is no incentive to make peace because Mr Minnawi has got the top job. He will also nominate his friends to senior posts, they claimed.

The former rebel leader denied this. Mr Minnawi told the Guardian: "This is not my position. It's the position for the people of Darfur." No other jobs had yet been allocated, he added.

Mr Minnawi said he would offer new concessions to those who had not signed: "I didn't think we would achieve peace immediately after I signed. I wanted to create the basis for the others," he said.

Chad/Darfur: Gov't Says Rebel Attacks Launched From Sudan

From Reuters

Chad's government said on Wednesday that rebels who had attacked towns in the country's southeast raising fears of a strike on the capital N'Djamena had launched their assault from neighboring Sudan's Darfur.

The army bolstered security in N'Djamena after the rebels, fighting to end the rule of President Idriss Deby, briefly seized Goz Beida near the Sudan border on Sunday then attacked Am Timan further west as they moved deeper into the country.

"The international community must understand that Chad is the victim of a blatant aggression led from Sudanese territory with sophisticated weaponry," Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said in a statement.

"The security forces have taken all necessary measures to stop this new act of aggression definitively and to prevent others being prepared by small groups based in Darfur," he said.

Fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2003 and displaced more than two million, has often spilled over into arid, oil producing Chad.

Deby has repeatedly accused Sudan of backing the rebels, saying Khartoum was trying to export its "fundamentalist system" to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

Sudan denies the charge.

"There is absolutely no support from the government of Sudan to any rebels," a Sudanese army spokesman said, but noted the border between the two countries was porous.

"It is entirely possible that rebels can enter the border and attack from Sudan as rebels enter and attack the Sudanese armed forces from Chadian territories," he said.

The attacks recalled a lightning assault on N'Djamena in April, launched from the east by rebels who raced across the desert in pick-up trucks from the Sudan border. Several hundred people were killed in the capital before the army took control.

A leader of the rebel coalition, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), said late on Tuesday its fighters would not advance immediately from the area around Am Timan, some 600 km (370 miles) east of N'Djamena.

Chad's army nonetheless put tanks around the presidential palace on Tuesday and sent reinforcements to the region around Mongo, a town 400 km (250 miles) east of the capital on a main route into the city.

Diplomats and government officials said the rebels appeared to be playing a game of "cat and mouse," as they did in April, launching small-scale strikes on poorly-fortified towns in the former French colony in order to disorientate the armed forces.

"This rebel column has been reluctant to engage the security forces, instead infiltrating a locality then pulling back so as to make the local and international community believe they occupy territory inside the country," Doumgor said.

He said the rebels were using sophisticated weaponry, pointing to a ground-to-air missile fired at a French military reconnaissance plane on Monday, which missed after the aircraft took "precautionary measures."

Darfur: US Shows Frustration with Slow UN Action

From AFP

The United States is showing frustration over the United Nations' inability to force Sudan's government to accept UN peacekeepers for strife-torn Darfur.

Sudan has so far opposed a UN peacekeeping mission for Darfur, whose crisis has been branded by Washington as genocide, and this week expelled the world body's special representative after he said Sudan's military had suffered major losses against rebels.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denounced UN envoy Jan Pronk's expulsion as "unfortunate in the extreme" and implicitly noted the UN's inability to force an end to the killings against Darfur civilians.

"The situation in Darfur is deteriorating and the international community needs to be able to act there," Rice said Monday.

[edit]

A senior State Department official admitted that the Darfur conflict was testing the limits of the multilateral approach President George W. Bush has adopted since the start of his second term in January 2005.

"Have these resolutions and the energy applied by some members of the international community been what we would have hoped? No. Of course not," said the official, who requested anonymity.

"We did not write the resolution ourselves but that is the nature of -- I would point out -- multilateral diplomacy," he told reporters.

"In fact, without the United States' efforts, you would not have the modest changes and gains that you have had, and lives have been saved as a result," the official added.

Bush has named his own special envoy to Darfur, former ambassador Andrew Natsios, and Rice often mentions the conflict during official trips abroad, from Egypt to China last week.

Natsios recently returned from Egypt after a week-long visit to Sudan, his first since Bush named him his special envoy for Darfur earlier this month.

Rice met Tuesday at the White House with Natsios, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer to discuss the special envoy's trip, a spokesman said.

Like her predecessor, Colin Powell, Rice has called the violence in Darfur genocide.

[edit]

John Prendergast, an expert at the non-governmental International Crisis Group, recently suggested that France and the United States impose a no-fly zone over Darfur and that the UN prepare "non consensual deployment" in case Khartoum persists in its refusal to accept UN peacekeepers.

Prendergast's suggestions irritated the anonymous senior US official.

"Now, I don't know who you are going to find around the world to shoot the way into Sudan. I don't know, maybe the International Crisis group or John Prendergast has an idea," the official said.

"That is the great thing about being in a think tank: You can suggest these ideas and criticize without actually having to implement the solution," he said.

Darfur: No Plan for US or NATO Troops

From Xinhua

The United States would not dispatch troops to Sudan, nor is there any plan of deploying NATO forces in Darfur, U.S. envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios said on Tuesday.

In statements to Egypt’s official MENA news agency, Natsios said that the United States would not change its stance on UN resolution 1706 on the deployment of international peacekeeping forces in Darfur under the UN umbrella, nor would it dispatch any troops to Sudan.

The US goal in Darfur was to improve the humanitarian situation through putting an end to the conflict there and repatriation of refugees, he said.

He said that there was no plan for deploying NATO forces in Darfur. The NATO would only keep extending logistical assistance as is the case with the current African troops now being deployed in the region.

Darfur: A Mercenary Force

An op-ed from Max Boot in the Wall Street Journal

Peter Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Corporate Warriors," estimates that at least 20,000 private gunslingers have been employed in Iraq alone. Among foreign troop contingents, they are second in number -- and in casualties -- only to the U.S. military. Mr. Singer quips: "President George W. Bush's 'coalition of the willing' might thus be more aptly described as the 'coalition of the billing.'"

Many of these contractors, largely veterans of Western and Soviet bloc militaries, have performed bravely in trying circumstances. But they have also caused their share of problems. There have been numerous scandals over firms charging too much or not delivering what they promised. Even more pervasive have been complaints about guards running wild. In their black body armor and armored Chevy Suburbans, contractors are notorious for careening through traffic and firing wildly, not caring who gets hurt as long as they reach their destination.

Yet, for all their shortcomings, there is no way to end our reliance on privateers -- at least not without a big increase in military end-strength, which is needed but not likely. And they can actually perform valuable work that we won't send our own troops to do.

Case in point: Darfur. A force of 7,000 lightly armed African Union peacekeepers has been helpless to stop the genocide being carried out in this region of the Sudan. Odds are that a contingent of U.N. blue helmets, if and when they finally arrive, won't do much better. Why not turn to the private sector?

Mercenaries have committed their share of abuses in Africa. (See "The Wild Geese" and "The Dogs of War," both based on real events in the 1950s and 1960s, the heyday of "Mad" Mike Hoare, "Black" Jacques Schramme and other notorious swashbucklers). But they have also been effective in stopping human-rights abuses.

In 1995-96, Executive Outcomes, a South African firm working for the government of Sierra Leone, made short work of a savage rebel movement known as the Revolutionary United Front that was notorious for chopping off the limbs of its victims. As a result, Sierra Leone was able to hold its first free election in decades. The now-defunct Executive Outcomes also helped the Angolan government quell a long-running insurgency by Jonas Savimbi's Unita, leading to the signing of a peace accord in 1994. Another private firm, MPRI, helped to bring peace to the former Yugoslavia in 1995 by organizing the Croatian military offensive that stopped Serbian aggression.

Hired guns could be equally effective in stopping the campaign of rape, murder and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militia in Darfur. In fact, several firms have already offered their services. They could be employed by an international organization like the U.N. or NATO, by an ad hoc group of concerned nations, or even by philanthropists like Bill Gates or George Soros.

Critics complain that mercenaries didn't provide long-term fixes. Sierra Leone, for instance, fell back into brutal warfare after Executive Outcomes left. But that's because the mercenaries were on short-term contracts; they might have created more lasting stability if they had been given longer-term employment.

Many also worry about abuses committed by mercenaries, who in some cases have tried to plunder or even take over small states. But the record of privateers compares favorably with that of U.N. peacekeeping forces, which have been distinguished more by their propensity for committing sex crimes than by any success in keeping the peace. To deal with potential abuses, private fighters could be hired under a contract that would hold them liable for war crimes in the International Criminal Court or some other jurisdiction. That would make them more accountable than U.N. forces, which operate with almost complete impunity.

Sending mercenaries to Africa isn't politically correct. But it would be a lot more useful than sending more aid money that will be wasted or passing ineffectual resolutions that will be ignored.

Darfur: Shameful Evasions

An op-ed by Brian Brivati and Philip Spencer in the Guardian

What is more shocking is the indifference of the left. Instead of demanding our governments act now, we are told that what is going on in Darfur is none of our business. Or that this is civil war, not genocide. Or that it is far too complicated for us to intervene. Or that any intervention on our part would only make matters worse. Or that we shouldn't call for intervention because no one has the slightest intention of doing anything, so we are raising expectations that cannot be met. Or that the real plan is to invade Sudan and create a new colony.

These are shameful evasions that run counter to all the left is supposed to stand for. Ever since the Holocaust, if not before, it has been surely the most basic principle for the left to take a stand against state-organised mass killing. We found a name for this crime - genocide. We devised a law against this crime - the genocide convention. But now we are confronted by mass killing again. Whether or not you call it genocide, it is mass murder. The author of the UN report, Antonio Cassese, who reluctantly decided it might not technically, absolutely qualify as genocide, specifically concluded that actually it made no difference. Above all, he said, don't use this as an excuse not to act.

Is the left silent because it is the US and Britain that have called for action? These governments have done very little and only under pressure from an improvised coalition of refugees, NGOs and the internationalist left in Europe. The main problem is not with the west. It is more with two other powerful forces: one political, the other ideological.

The first is other states, especially China, which depends on Sudan for 11% of its oil. Oil interests - that's familiar.

The other is the problem of national sovereignty. The UN does not want to sanction intervention inside the borders of a nation state for fear of violating this sacred principle. So it asks the Sudanese government if it could send a few troops in. But, amazingly, the Sudan government won't agree. It only tolerates the African Union force because it knows it can't do anything to stop the killing.

Whether we see this as civil war or genocide, we face the same choice. We can remain bystanders and let the slaughter go on. If so, let us never again pretend we care about large numbers of people being killed, especially if they are black, especially if they are African, especially if they are Muslim.

Uganda: Paths to Forgiveness

From the Christian Science Monitor

Today a doe-eyed 20-something named Betty Atto, a former member of one of the world's most-brutal rebel armies, finally gets to take her first step toward redemption - toward the forgiveness she now seeks from the people she terrorized for so long.

It's a sun-drenched afternoon here in Africa's heartland, and Betty stands beneath a "blessing tree," fidgeting with the pleats in her fanciest skirt. She's waiting with 400 other former rebels for a ritual to begin that will welcome them back into their community.

"We did bad things," Betty says of her six years in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group infamous for chopping off lips and other body parts of civilians - and forcing children to become sex slaves and soldiers.

Today's main event involves Betty and other ex-rebels stepping on an egg - an act that symbolically breaks open a new life and returns them to innocence. It's the first step in a long process of earning forgiveness from their community. And it stands as one example of how African notions of justice differ from the approach typical in the US and other Western nations.

Indeed, Western civilization - with its emphasis on individual rights and responsibilities - might tilt toward severely punishing people like Betty and her one-time commander, LRA chief Joseph Kony. After all, Mr. Kony presides over a "terrorist" group largely responsible for as many as 200,000civilian deaths during two decades of war. Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague issued indictments for Kony and his top commanders for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Yet here in Uganda, there's serious talk of reconciling even with Kony if peace talks succeed. Such an impulse echoes Nelson Mandela's famous forgiveness of his South African captors. It emerges from a unique continental ethos of communalism, in which the desire to punish individuals for their crimes is balanced against the need to restore wholeness to the community - to unite victims, perpetrators, and their families. Indeed, it's often a practical response enshrined in tribal jurisprudence: Villages in small, poor communities need every last person to survive. These days, the tendency is often magnified by the spread of Christianity - with its focus on forgiveness - across the continent.

But Africa's reconciliation ethos now faces several difficult tests. The number of major armed conflicts on the continent has fallen, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 11 in 1999 to just three in 2005. Yet the aftermath of war is not simply peace. As conflict-weary societies such as Burundi, Rwanda, and Liberia start to rebuild, a common conundrum looms: How to reconcile bitter enemies so all can move forward, while also ensuring justice for those who committed atrocities.

[edit]

It wasn't as if Betty Atto wanted to become a "terrorist."

During a raid on her village when she was a teenager, she was kidnapped and forced to become a sex slave and soldier in a rebel group the US has labeled a terrorist organization. If she dared refuse an order from a commander, she faced almost-certain death. So, gradually, she became an active member of the LRA, which, diplomats point out, has killed more people than Al Qaeda (not including insurgents in Iraq), Hizbullah, and Hamas combined.

Then, early one morning in 2004, after six years of captivity, she and three others made a risky escape, running through high grass to a Ugandan Army barracks.

Suddenly, Betty was free. But her homecoming was complicated. During her absence, her two brothers had been killed by the LRA - the same army Betty had been forced to join. It contributed to "many problems" Betty has with her family and community. Fellow villagers mutter "terrorist" as she and others walk past.

In some ways, the war in northern Uganda is a vicious family feud. The LRA is dominated by the Acholi ethnic group. When rebels began their quest to overthrow the Ugandan government in 1987, they had tacit support from many Acholis, who complained of economic and political marginalization by the government. But amid wartime destruction, civilian support waned. Then the LRA turned on villagers, raiding their houses for recruits and food - and killing or maiming resisters. It is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Most of the region's 2 million displaced survivors now cluster for safety in fetid camps rampant with alcoholism and crime.

But recently the LRA has lost momentum, in part because of declining support from its longtime sponsor, Sudan. A cease-fire was signed in August as a prelude to a comprehensive peace agreement that so far remains elusive.

This weekend, Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni met LRA negotiators in Sudan for the first time since the talks began in July. Although the meeting reportedly consisted of a bitter, five-minute exchange, his appearance was intended to demonstrate the government's commitment to the talks.

The moves toward an accord have meant an influx of ex-rebels coming home. Increasingly, the Acholis face a tough decision: How to treat the returning "terrorists" who are often members of their own ethnic group - and even their own families. A poll last year by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in New York highlights the problem: 76 percent of Ugandans want wrongdoers "held accountable," yet 65 percent support amnesty for ex-LRA members.

Betty, meanwhile, feels the hostility. She constantly, almost reflexively, looks over her shoulder in fear. Sometimes she considers going back to the LRA. At least there she has a "husband" - a rebel commander who made her his wife. She has a lot riding on today's egg-stepping ceremony.

Indeed, the ritual's practical purpose is to begin to reunite families and communities divided by war - to help siblings, parents, and cousins resume lives together. Then they can try to lift themselves out of the region's crushing poverty.

Sounding unsure, Betty says of the ritual, "I hope it will help."

[edit]

They're also trying to head off the imposition of Western-style justice: The ICC issued arrest warrants for five top LRA leaders last October, trying to end the conflict by punishing the individuals responsible. The move raised hackles among tribal chiefs, who see it as contradictory to their conciliatory approach. Yet their traditional method has major flaws . With so many atrocities, for instance, it's not clear which perpetrators hurt which victims, and one-on-one reconciliation is impossible.

There's also plenty of skepticism. "The ICC is a good idea," says Edward Ochken, a dissenting chief. After all that the LRA leaders have done, he adds, "No one can say they should not be tried." Indeed, 66 percent of residents say top commanders should be punished, according to the poll. Many, however, distinguish between the leaders and young soldiers who were following orders.

Yet, according to the survey, 22 percent would forgive even the top LRA leaders. In a community full of traditional beliefs, spirits are often assumed to be controlling people. A wiry ex-rebel named Samuel Watmon explains how he would approach Kony, the LRA's mystical leader: "I would say to him, 'It was a ghost that was leading you, so let's forget about the past.' "

Darfur: al-Bashir Lashes Out at Foreign Media, Relief Groups

From the AP

President Omar al-Bashir lashed out Tuesday at foreign media and relief groups active in Darfur implying that aid organizations serving the some 2.5 million people forced to flee their homes could face expulsion.

The Sudanese leader's warning follows the departure Monday by the United Nations chief envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, after the government gave him three days to leave the country.

Sudan's government was working to "rid (refugee) camps of those exploiting the suffering of the people, those suspicious organizations who are part of a series of conspiracies," the official news agency quoted al-Bashir as saying during his speech at the start of Muslims' Eid al-Fitr vacation.

"We have promised before God not to let Darfurians' suffering be a pretext for foreign intervention or a subject for hostile media," al-Bashir said according to SUNA.

Darfur: Pronk Has No Regrets Over Blog Comments

From Reuters

Top U.N. envoy Jan Pronk said on Tuesday he had no regrets about comments he made concerning the situation in Darfur which led to his expulsion from Sudan, and said he hoped he could return to the country.

"I am still the special envoy to Sudan -- just now not in Sudan itself," he told Dutch radio station BNR Nieuwsradio in his first interview since leaving Khartoum.

Pronk left Sudan on Monday after he published comments on his Web site saying the Sudanese army lost two major battles to rebels in North Darfur and morale was low.

The remarks infuriated Sudan's powerful armed forces who called Pronk a threat to security.

Pronk told BNR the information was widely available and it was not the Weblog itself that lay behind his expulsion.

"The main thing is that a peace accord was signed in Darfur but the military are trampling all over it and are still trying to gain a military victory," he said.

"I have been trying constantly over the last months to expose this and this doesn't suit them."

Observers say his expulsion exacerbated existing tensions between the government in Khartoum and the United Nations at a time when the world body is stymied in its efforts to send U.N. troops and police to take over the Darfur peacekeeping mission.

Asked whether he should have been more diplomatic, Pronk replied: "I was extremely careful".

Pronk said he had kept to three rules in his work -- never to talk about conversations, to be balanced and fair, and not to criticise individuals.

The last days had been nerve-racking, he said, while the Sudanese government weighed whether to expel him.

"It was said that I had displayed a hostile attitude towards the Sudanese government over the past year which is not the case, but they are trying to build a case," he said of the Sudanese authorities.

Pronk gave the interview on a stop in the Netherlands en route to New York. He said he will brief U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday.

Chief U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Pronk still has the full support of Annan. "As far as we are concerned, his status remains unchanged," Dujarric said at U.N. headquarters.

[edit]

Pronk, 66, a former Netherlands development minister, served several terms in the Dutch parliament and was in the cabinet under two prime ministers. Annan named him U.N. special representative for Sudan in June 2004.

But he spent more time on the separate Darfur crisis.

African Union Commission Chairman Omar Alpha Konare on Tuesday expressed regret over U.N. envoy Jan Pronk's expulsion from Sudan and hailed him as a human right hero.

"The chairperson pays tribute to Mr Pronk for his commitment to human security and human rights and for the tireless efforts he has deployed in the promotion of reconciliation and lasting peace in the Sudan," the AU said in a statement.

Chad/Darfur: Rebel Attacks

Two articles - both via POTP.

From the BBC

Security has been tightened in the Chad capital, N'Djamena, following reports that rebels are approaching the city.

A BBC correspondent says that tanks have been stationed in key areas, such as outside the presidential palace, and military vehicles are on patrol.

Troops have been recalled to base despite the Muslim holiday of Eid - the biggest festival of the year in Chad.

The rebels began their offensive in the east at the weekend but are now said to be near the central town of Mongo.

The BBC's Stephanie Hancock in Chad says there are reports that the outskirts of the capital are heavily fortified with government troops.

On Monday night, the rebels claimed to have seized the town of Am Timan, some 600km from N'Djamena but they are now reported to be just five hours' drive from the capital.

The government has denied that Am Timan had fallen and urged the capital's residents to stay calm.

"The government appeals to the population to remain calm and to go normally about one's business," said spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor.

On Sunday, the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) rebel sezied the small town of Gos Beida.

Our correspondent says there has also been fierce fighting in the border town of Ade.

From Reuters

Rebels have attacked a second town in southeastern Chad, government officials said on Tuesday, putting the country's army on alert as the insurgents appeared to be moving towards the capital, N'Djamena.

Armed men attacked Am Timan on Monday afternoon, 24 hours after briefly seizing the town of Goz Beida near the Sudan border, Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

Former colonial power France said a ground-to-air missile had been launched against one of its military reconnaissance planes on Monday but missed after the aircraft took "precautionary measures".

The attacks recalled a lightning assault on N'Djamena in April, launched from the east by rebels who raced across the desert in pick-up trucks from the Sudan border. Several hundred people were killed in the capital before the army took control.

"The security forces are following the movements of these adventurers, whose objective is ... to take advantage of the fact that the towns they have besieged do not have any significant military presence," Doumgor said.

Chad's army bolstered security in the capital overnight. A Reuters witness said there had been troop movements around the dusty streets while a tank and jeeps equipped with rocket launchers had taken up position outside the presidential palace.

"These are normal movements. ... We don't need reinforcements from outside, we have sufficient means," Defence Minister Bichara Issa Djadallah told Reuters by telephone. He said he did not believe the rebels would reach the city.

"Last time was a lesson for them. This time they won't risk doing the same thing ... Our troops are pursuing them," he said.

A Western diplomat in N'Djamena said the insurgents had moved further west towards the capital since attacking Am Timan.

"N'Djamena is calm but there is a rebel presence in the centre of the country. ... For the time being there has been no fighting there but it is probable that the Chadian army will take action," the diplomat said, asking not to be named.

France, whose air force fired a warning shot on the rebel column as it advanced on N'Djamena in April, said it was "very attached to the stability of Chad" and following events closely.

The insurgents, calling themselves the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) -- the latest in a string of titles grouping various rebel factions -- have said they want polls to end the "catastrophic" rule of President Idriss Deby.

Deby -- who has ruled since seizing power in a 1990 revolt which also began in the east -- won elections boycotted by the opposition three weeks after the April assault on N'Djamena.

Fighting in Sudan's Darfur region, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2003 and displaced more than two million, has often spilled over into arid, oil-producing Chad. Deby has repeatedly accused Khartoum of backing the rebels.

But since the April attack on N'Djamena, the rebel coalition has splintered along rival ethnic and political lines. Recent clashes along the border region with Darfur have involved separate rebel groups rather than one united front.

"There are around a dozen movements which come together and fall apart periodically. It's hard to follow. There are diverse leaders and ethnicities and in principle, there is not one grouping," the Western diplomat said.

One of the rebel groups, the Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT), said it supported the latest uprising.

"(We) urge once again the various liberation forces to unite in order to boot Deby out of Chad," it said in a statement.

Darfur: National Call-In Day

From the Genocide Intervention Network

With a single phone call, you can ensure that President Bush honors United Nations Day by re-doubling American efforts to end the genocide in Darfur.

Tomorrow, on United Nations Day, urge the president to make the immediate deployment of UN peacekeepers — with a robust mandate to protect civilians — his top priority at the Security Council. To facilitate this, insist that he vigorously implements the terms of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act and thus strengthens the hand of Special Envoy Andrew Natsios.

For one hour, thousands of activists from across the nation will tie up all 1,000 phone lines at the White House and fill its voicemail. Our collective voice will ensure that the only message that President Bush receives for this entire hour is that the genocide in Darfur must finally be stopped!

What to do

Call the White House at (202) 456-1414.

If you have trouble getting through to the switchboard, help us fill the White House voicemail by calling the comment line at (202) 456-1111.

If you are unable to call between 12:00 noon and 1:00 PM Eastern (9:00 and 10:00 AM Pacific), feel free to call at any time throughout the day. We need your voice!

What to say

The script: President Bush, today, on United Nations Day, I urge you to put Darfur at the top of your agenda at the Security Council and ensure that UN peacekeepers are deployed without delay and are given the mandate to enforce civilian protection. The US has the power to protect! As president, you can move beyond words and take robust action to stop genocide in Darfur by vigorously implementing the terms of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act and strengthening the hand of Special Envoy Andrew Natsios.

Uganda: LRA Demands Single Location for Regrouping

From Reuters

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said on Tuesday they had demanded to be allowed to regroup at a single location instead of two as peace talks trying to end one of Africa's longest wars continue.

A truce signed between the two sides in August raised hopes of an end to a brutal 20-year insurgency that has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 2 million in northern Uganda.

The LRA became notorious for cruel attacks against civilians: killing villagers, slicing body parts off people, and abducting children to serve as fighters.

Under the truce, the rebels were supposed to assemble at two neutral locations in south Sudan -- at Ri-Kwangba, on the Sudan-Congo border and Owiny-Ki-Bul, on the Sudan-Uganda border.

The LRA say they want to assemble on one site because they fear the Ugandan army. The army believes the rebels want to reorganise their forces in one location and resume attacks on civilians.

Independent monitors said both sides had violated the truce agreement: the rebels by failing to assemble at the two camps and Uganda's military by encroaching on them. The rebels said they had gathered at Owiny-Ki-Bul, but then fled fearing attack.

The truce was further strained when LRA fighters killed a Ugandan officer in a clash by the River Nile, 115 km (70 miles) from south Sudan's capital Juba, where peace talks are being held.

"We want everyone to be able to gather at Ri-Kwangba," LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayoo told Reuters by satellite phone from Juba.

"We want to put a separation between the two forces to avoid future clashes. We don't feel safe at Owiny-Ki-Bul because of army deployments. We want to move," he said.

Uganda rejected the rebels' demand. The army has long suspected that the LRA group in Owiny-Ki-Bul, east of the Nile, are trying to cross the river to join other fighters.

"They are simply trying to do what they have wanted all along: to regroup and resume attacks on civilians from the western front," said Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the government team to Juba, adding that Uganda also had troops west of the Nile.

Darfur: AU Struggles

From Reuters

The African Union is ready for a controversial peacekeeping mission in Somalia but nowhere near implementing an intended 4,000 troop expansion of its stretched Darfur force, a top official said on Tuesday.

"African countries are willing to give any amount of troops for peacekeeping ... (but) I'm telling you, that might be impossible," peace and security director Geofrey Mugumya said of the proposed increase to the 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur.

Such an expansion is seen by diplomats as a stop-gap before a possible mission transfer to U.N. troops in the vast Sudanese region. Conflict there has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced another 2.5 million since early 2003.

Khartoum, however, opposes U.N. entry, the AU mission's mandate ends on Dec. 31, and the pan-African body is struggling even to rotate current battalions, let alone add the intended six more at a cost of roughly $80 million.

"Sometimes you get promises (of funds), but they are not translated into reality," he told Reuters at AU headquarters in Ethiopia, saying an Arab League pledge of $50 million to boost the Darfur mission had not yet materialised.

"Here we spend most of our time smiling at donors rather than on real issues."

[edit]

Aspiring to provide local solutions to Africa's crises, the AU is hoping to set up a five-brigade standby force for rapid intervention by 2010.

Darfur, however, came too early, Mugumya said, so the AU would welcome a U.N. takeover even though it may realistically have to extend its mandate into next year.

"The AU finds itself between a rock and a hard place. If it leaves, what would happen? If we stay, do we have resources?" he said.

Often criticised for failing to stop suffering in Darfur, the AU should be credited for rapid deployments and some stabilisation against all odds, he argued.

"AU troops move fast under harsh conditions. Would U.N. soldiers sleep under trees like the locals?"

Sudan: War? Not Where the Oil Wealth Flows

From the New York Times

To understand Sudan’s defiance toward the world, especially the Western world, check out the Ozone Café.

Here young, rich Sudanese, wearing ripped jeans and fancy gym shoes, sit outside licking scoops of ice cream as an outdoor air-conditioning system sprays a cooling veil of mist. Around the corner is a new BMW dealership unloading $165,000 cars.

“I tell people you only live this life once,” said Nada Gerais, a saleswoman.

While one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises continues some 600 miles away in Darfur, across Khartoum bridges are being built, office towers are popping up, supermarkets are opening and flatbed trucks hauling plasma TV’s fight their way through thickening traffic.

Despite the image of Sudan as a land of cracked earth and starving people, the economy is booming, with little help from the West. Oil has turned it into one of the fastest growing economies in Africa — if not the world — emboldening the nation’s already belligerent government and giving it the wherewithal to resist Western demands to end the conflict in Darfur.

American sanctions have kept many companies from Europe and the United States out of Sudan, but firms from China, Malaysia, India, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are racing in. Direct foreign investment has shot up to $2.3 billion this year, from $128 million in 2000, all while the American government has tried to tighten the screws.

“Khartoum is hot — in all ways,” said Hashim Wahir, chairman of Petronas Sudan, a branch of the Malaysian national oil company.

It was 115 degrees outside, but Mr. Wahir was also talking about business.

As long as Asian countries are eager to trade with Sudan, despite its human rights record, the American embargo seems to have minimal effect. The country’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, keeps demonstrating his disdain for the West by refusing to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, despite continued bloodshed and pressure from the United States to let the peacekeepers in.

“The government knows it doesn’t need America,” said Abda Yahia el-Mahdi, a former finance minister, now in private consulting. “The only people who are being hurt by the sanctions are the Americans, who are missing out on this huge boom.”

The wealth is hardly evenly shared, and much of Sudan, like Darfur, remains desperately poor. Indeed, the nation’s per capita income was only $640 in 2005, at market exchange rates, according to the World Bank.

But the country’s G.D.P. grew 8 percent in 2005, according to the International Monetary Fund, and is predicted to increase by 12 percent this year. Cotton and other agricultural products have traditionally been the engines of the economy here, but the new growth comes largely because Sudan has substantially increased its crude oil production to 512,000 barrels a day — a drop compared with Saudi Arabia’s or Iran’s, but enough to bring billions of dollars to a country that until recently was one of the poorest on earth.

“Oil and real estate investment, primarily in urban areas, is really what’s driving the economy,” said Michael Kevane, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University. “There’s no doubt about that.”

The boom is also strengthening the government’s hand at home. Over the past few years, Mr. Bashir has been on an infrastructure binge, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into roads, bridges, power plants, hospitals and schools, projects that tend to boost any government’s popularity. Mr. Bashir seems to desperately need it, with many people across the country, not just in Darfur, openly rebelling against his rule.

Mr. Bashir, an army general, seized power in 1989 through a military coup, and among the biggest beneficiaries of these boom times have been his troops. Ms. Mahdi said more than 70 percent of the government’s share of oil profits is spent on defense. A government priority is to manufacture guns and ammunition domestically, in case external supplies are cut off.

Despite all the new materialism, Sudan still marches to a martial tune. Army officers enjoy special status, foreign visitors must register with the police and schoolchildren are required to wear camouflage uniforms to class. But the boom is changing much about society, from the careers people pursue, to the music they listen to, even what they eat.

[edit]

For years, the Sudanese economy was a disaster, with triple-digit inflation, moribund industries and war. Ever since Sudan’s independence in 1956, Christian and animist tribes in the south have rebelled against Muslim rulers in the north.

Oil had been discovered here by Chevron in the 1970’s, but the oil fields straddled the north-south divide and were essentially unworkable while the fighting was going on.

The American government imposed a trade embargo in 1997, freezing Sudanese government assets in the United States and cutting off its exports to and imports from Sudan, with a few exceptions. The reason: human rights abuses connected to the north-south war and Sudan’s links to terrorists. Osama bin Laden lived in Khartoum in the 1990’s.

But by 1999, when the first trickle of oil began to flow out of Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, Sudan’s economy was turning around. A small cadre of Western-educated technocrats had followed the I.M.F.’s reform programs to the letter — cutting spending, privatizing state-owned businesses, lowering inflation and pushing infrastructure.

“It was classic, conservative economic policies,” said Safwat Fanous, chairman of the political science department at the University of Khartoum. “And it worked.”

Even World Bank economists have been impressed.

“These are very good people managing the economy and would rate among the best anywhere in Africa,” said Asif Faiz, country manager for the World Bank in Sudan.

But, he added, they need to do more to spread the wealth to rural areas and focus on the poor.

[edit]

In 2005, many people here hoped the American sanctions would be lifted and the economy would hit warp speed after Sudan’s leaders, coaxed by American mediators, made peace with southern rebels. But by that point the conflict in Darfur was raging, and relations with the United States only turned frostier.

“We felt like the Americans betrayed us,” said the Sudanese foreign minister, Lam Akol.

Still, Sudan had already learned to rely on the East, and because of oil exports, the economy had gained a stable momentum of its own. Inflation is now 6 percent; investment and development are reaching beyond downtown Khartoum to Sudan’s central agricultural belt and to Juba, the main city in the south.

But Sudan is a huge country, Africa’s largest, at nearly a million square miles. Enormous swaths of territory are still neglected, and growing class differences could sow the seeds of further unrest. Rebel groups in Darfur and other areas, eager for their share of oil profits and power, pose another problem.

Business leaders say the biggest danger would be if the United States succeeded in persuading Sudan’s Asian and Middle Eastern trading partners to join the boycott.

“The Americans are not a threat, but if the international community lines up against us, ahh, that is a different issue,” said Osama Daoud Abdellatif, chairman of the DAL Group, a conglomerate that owns the Coke factory, the Ozone Café and a number of other businesses. “Everything has been going so well, but Darfur could spoil the party.”

Chad/Darfur: Rebels Attack Second Town

From Reuters

A newly formed rebel group has attacked a second town in eastern Chad a day after briefly seizing a settlement near the border with Sudan, the central African country's government said on Tuesday.

Armed men attacked Am Timan on Monday afternoon, 24 hours after taking the town of Goz Beida and then being repelled by government forces, Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

"The security forces are following the movements of these adventurers, whose objective is simply to show their presence on the ground and take advantage of the fact that the towns they have besieged do not have any significant military presence," he said.

The insurgents, calling themselves the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) -- the latest in a string of titles grouping various rebel factions -- have said they want polls to end the rule of President Idriss Deby.

Chadian rebels attacked the capital N'Djamena in April in a lightning assault launched from the east, racing across the desert in pick-up trucks from the Sudan border region three weeks before an election which returned Deby for a third term.

Several hundred people were killed in the attack on the capital before government forces defeated the insurgents.

The government called on the population of Africa's fifth-largest country -- twice the size of former colonial power France -- to remain calm.

"These adventurers stand no chance against the determination of the Chadian armed forces, who are ready to give them the same welcome they received in April," Doumgor said.

Darfur: Canada Should Lead in "Responsibility to Protect"

An op-ed by Allan Rock, former Canadian ambassador to the UN, and David Mozersky, Horn of Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, in the Toronto Star

Last week, Canada's Parliament addressed the continuing tragedy in Darfur. The debate occurred at a critical moment for the millions whose lives hang in the balance, as the nations of the world decide whether to mount a collective effort to protect them, or to watch, once again, as mute bystanders to mass atrocities.

Canada is the principal architect and advocate of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine. It should, therefore, play a key role in galvanizing international action. Canada's efforts, and the world's response, will determine whether responsibility to protect is a living instrument or a dead letter.

[edit]

In the long run, the only sustainable solution in Darfur lies in a political agreement resolving the root causes of the conflict. The Darfur peace agreement provides a foundation for that solution, but it has done little to end the conflict.

Political efforts to revive the negotiations must be actively pursued, because without a political option the parties will surely continue to fight.

Yet the most urgent need is to provide protection for civilians. Canada should lead the way in showing that "responsibility to protect" is not just a slogan, but a solemn commitment on which the world intends to deliver.

Darfur: Pronk Anticipated Expulsion

From the The Washington Times

Jan Pronk, the senior U.N. envoy to Sudan, said in a telephone interview that he sensed Khartoum was getting ready to expel him weeks before an announcement Sunday that he had been given three days to leave Sudan because of remarks on his personal Web site.

Mr. Pronk, who has been pressing the Sudanese authorities and rebel parties to implement peace treaties and accept a stronger international peacekeeping force in Darfur, was to have left Khartoum last night and arrive in New York late tomorrow.

Western governments yesterday protested Sudan's expulsion of the diplomat, who had described heavy casualties and sagging morale among Sudanese forces in a blog at his personal Web site, www.janpronk.nl. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the Sudanese decision "unfortunate in the extreme."

Mr. Pronk said in the interview that he was not surprised by the edict.

"During the past few weeks it was obvious they had something in mind," he said, noting that Sudanese Army officials had threatened him with expulsion weeks ago after he had published information or opinions the government found objectionable.

He also said the Sudanese government had "put a prize on my head through a student newspaper last year. That was after I proposed replacing the African peacekeepers in Darfur with U.N. forces."

Darfur: Pupils Want 400,000 Paper Dolls to Mark Deaths

From the Chicago Tribune

They're just paper dolls, cut from a hand-drawn pattern, faces drawn in Magic Marker.

But to pupils at one U.S. middle school, they signify the suffering of thousands on the other side of the world in Sudan.

"We were shocked and disturbed to hear about the genocide in Darfur because most of us didn't know what was going on," said Elizabeth Kapnick, an 8th grader at Elm Place School in Highland Park, Ill. "We wanted to make something that would touch people. ... I figured paper dolls created by children just like the ones in Darfur."

The pupils started cutting and decorating the dolls in spring and soon were giving the patterns to friends and family members.

They now have about 4,000 dolls. Their goal: 400,000 dolls, one for each person who has died in Darfur in the last three years, according to some estimates.

Sudan: Pronk Expulsion Creates Rift in Government

From VOA

Sudan's decision to expel United Nations envoy Jan Pronk has created a rift within the government. Former southern and Darfuri rebels - now part of Sudan's unity government - say they do not agree with the decision and were not consulted about it.

United Nations Special Representative to the Secretary-General Jan Pronk left Sudan, Monday, after his mission was terminated by the Sudanese government.

Pronk drew the ire of the government by writing on his personal website that the Sudanese Army is demoralized after losing two key battles against rebels in Darfur.

Partners in Sudan's unity government say the ruling National Congress Party expelled Pronk without their consent.

Mohamed Bashir - a spokesman for Darfur's Sudan Liberation Movement, which signed a peace deal with the Sudanese government in May - called the decision a failure on the part of the ruling party.

"No matter what Mr. Pronk does or says, he represents the UN and not himself," he said. "Under the circumstances any decision against him should be done after a wider consultation, at least within the Government of National Unity and take into consideration the ongoing difficulty between Sudan and the UN."

The former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which commands an autonomous government in southern Sudan, has also said it was not consulted about the decision.

SPLM representatives were not available for comment. But, according to news reports, top southern officials have condemned the decision to expel Pronk.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the National Congress Party and the SPLM has long been marred by tensions over wealth and power sharing.

Southern analyst Abendego Akok, of the Juba University Center for Peace and Justice Studies, says the decision to expel Pronk may further exacerbate tensions between northern Sudan and its former southern foes.

"The NCP has a larger share in the government. They can take any decision without referring to any partner," he said. "The transitional government, if they want to take decisions, they should consult the others before they take any decisions because this will widen the gap between them."

Sudan/Uganda: UN Refugee Agency Suspends Repatriation Amid Security Concerns

From IRIN

The United Nations refugee agency has suspended the repatriation of Sudanese refugees from Uganda after several violent incidents in southern Sudan during the past week, an official said on Monday.

Roberta Russo, spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Uganda, said plans to return 180 refugees to southern Sudan in a convoy of vehicles were abandoned on Friday after an attack in southern Sudan that killed at least 40 civilians.

"Because there were four ambushes [on Wednesday and Thursday], we cancelled a convoy that was heading to Kajo Keji carrying 180 returnees," Russo told IRIN. "We shall not resume until we are sure the situation has improved. We will be monitoring the security situation closely."

UNHCR has repatriated 14,000 refugees to southern Sudan since the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended two decades of war between the Sudanese government and former rebels of the Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Some 4,500 of the returnees were from camps in Uganda.

The violence was first thought to have been related to conflict between the Ugandan government and the country's rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Representatives of both parties are engaged in peace talks, mediated by the government of southern Sudan, in Juba. The Ugandan military has maintained a presence in southern Sudan since 2002 when it was allowed to cross the border in pursuit of LRA fighters who had bases there.

On Sunday, however, a South Sudanese government official, Maj-Gen Wilson Deng, said its forces had arrested some 15 South Sudanese soldiers who had raided Gumba, four kilometres from Juba, capital of South Sudan.

"We are still going on with the investigations since others are still on the run," added Deng, who heads the team monitoring the truce signed between the Ugandan government and the LRA.

He said the raiders had confessed to being responsible for the ambushes.

DRC: Neighbours, Seeking Influence, Eye Run-Off

From Reuters

Congo's neighbours may have pulled their armies out of the vast mineral-rich territory, officially at least, but they will be keeping a nervous eye out for vested interests in Sunday's presidential run-off.

Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war broke out when Rwanda and Uganda launched proxy rebel groups from eastern Congo in a bid to topple their former ally Laurent Kabila. At the war's height, six foreign armies fought over Congo's resources.

A bodyguard shot father Kabila dead in 2001 but his ruling clique, heavily influenced by allies Angola and Zimbabwe, ensured his son Joseph slid into the seat of power.

Officials from various governments refused to be drawn on whether they favoured Joseph Kabila or former Ugandan-backed rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba in Sunday's run-off vote.

But analysts said Kabila had more regional support.

"I think the devil you know is sometimes less frightening than the one you don't," said Ross Herbert, an analyst at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

"Kabila has not been able to demonstrate himself as a manager or to be able to end the rot ... But then, as for Bemba, there is no real sense of what the man is about. It's not entirely clear what his message is," Herbert said.

After a costly and fraught peace process which still has to pacify militias in Congo's lawless east, the greatest fear for many is a return to war should Sunday's loser refuse to accept the poll result -- especially after Kabila and Bemba's soldiers fought in the capital Kinshasa in August, killing more than 30.

Chileshe Mulenga, head of the Institute for Economic and Social Research, a Lusaka think-tank, warned investment may suffer: "Investors, especially those from Europe and Asia, don't isolate individual countries when looking at this region."

Military analysts say Angolan troops have been training Kabila's forces in border areas, while other countries have expanded their economic interests in Congo since the war.

"South Africa would like to stabilise and then invest in the Congo," said Henri Boschoff of the Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria. "But Angola considers Congo as its own backyard. It will be interesting to see how these two powers accommodate each other in the Congo."

Even Rwanda, which fought the Kabilas for years, appears to have accommodated Joseph Kabila after a series of peace deals.

"We do not support any candidate. We want to work in peace with whoever wins," Rosemary Museminari, Rwanda's state minister for cooperation, told Reuters in Kigali. She said any electoral violence could send the region "back to the days of chaos".

Crucially for Rwanda, Museminari said both Kabila and Bemba had given assurances that if elected they would address the matter of the Rwanda Liberation Democratic Front (FDLR) which includes ethnic Hutus who slaughtered more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 genocide and fled into Congo.

Yet after anti-Rwandan rhetoric by both campaigns, Rwandans with business interests in east Congo may be wary whoever wins.

"To show how Congolese a person is, he has to accuse his opponent of being a Rwandan ... That shows you the level of enmity. I don't think Kigali can gain anything from backing any candidate," said Shyaka Kanuma, editor of Rwanda's English weekly newspaper Focus.

Uganda would secretly prefer a Bemba victory, said Paul Omach, a political scientist at Kampala's Makerere University.

"Kabila has referred Uganda to the International Court of Justice for the invasion of Congo. They are not friends," he said.

Yet after years of cross-border attacks -- most recently by the Lord's Resistance Army -- Kampala says it just wants peace.

"We want a stable neighbourhood," Ruth Nankabirwa, Uganda's minister of state for defence, told Reuters in Kampala. "A stable DRC means a stable western Uganda."

Human Rights: UN Experts Urge Action on Serious Concerns

From the UN News Center

United Nations experts urged the international community to act quickly to address serious and deteriorating human rights situations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Sudan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Sri Lanka, with specific actions recommended in several instances.

A full-fledged international human rights monitoring mission should be urgently sent to Sri Lanka, where fierce fighting between the Government and Tamil rebels erupted again recently, to ameliorate an impending crisis of major proportions, said Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur’s on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

An international criminal tribunal should be established in the DRC to deal with crimes committed there since 1994, said an independent UN human rights expert, Titinga Frederic Pacere.

Both made their recommendations to the UN’s Third Committee (which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural matters) on Friday in hearings that continue today.

The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Sudan, Sima Samar, said the situation in Darfur had dramatically deteriorated, despite the signing of the peace agreement in May 2006, and warned that the conflict is spilling across borders, with militia attacking civilians in Chad and the Central African Republic.

The immediate international priority should be to ensure human rights protection and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations in the Sudan, she said, urging the international community to provide the necessary financial and technical support to the African Union mission there.

Rwanda: Panel To Probe French Role in Genocide

From United Press International

A Rwandan panel will look into the alleged role of France in the 1994 killings of Tutsis and others that Rwanda says was encouraged by French soldiers.

France has denied playing any role in the incident in which some 800,000 people were killed during a 100-day campaign, reports the BBC. But the government has said French soldiers stationed in the country at the time were complicit in the killings, says the report.

The panel, headed by former Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo, will hear evidence in public from 25 survivors of the genocide who claim to have witnessed French involvement. It will then decide whether to refer the allegations to the International Court of Justice.

The allegation by the Rwandan government is that France soldiers, who were in the country under a U.N. mandate, trained and armed some of the Hutus who carried out the killing spree.

Darfur/Chad: Janjawid Attacks Surge as Rebels Fight On

From IRIN

An upswing in cross-border attacks on Chadian civilians since early October has coincided with new bouts of fighting between the Chadian army and rebels.

Aid agency and government officials said Goz Beida, 160 km west of the Sudan border, and 200 km south of the regional aid-hub Abeche was briefly occupied by armed rebels on Sunday afternoon.

“The rebels attacked yesterday at 4 pm in the area around Goz Beida. They were repulsed by the Chadian army,” Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, a government spokesman, told IRIN on Monday.

Aid workers contacted in Goz Beida on Monday confirmed to IRIN that the rebels had left the town and had not threatened aid operations.

The attack is the latest in a string of attacks this year by rebels who have vowed to overthrow Chad’s President Idriss Deby.

But analysts warned that the mounting skirmishes are leaving a trail of corpses in their wake as deadly “Janjawid” attacks against Chadian civilians are surging at the same time. Often used to describe militias in the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan, Janjawid is an Arabic word that means “devils on horseback”.

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday that a new wave of attacks on Chadian civilians from across the Chad-Sudan border started on 3 October, and have continued since then.

Gaetan Mootoo, Chad researcher at Amnesty International, who has conducted field research in eastern Chad, said he believes Janjawid attacks tend to surge around the time of rebel attacks because the Chadian military is distracted and not protecting the border.

“My sense is that when we look at the pattern of attacks that have occurred in regions which were not protected by Chadian forces we can see there is a lack of provision by the Chadian authorities to protect their citizens, and that is when the Janjawid come to attack civilians,” Mootoo said.

“If there were proper patrolling that would lessen the occurrences or there would not be attacks,” he said. “We have seen in the past that when there is an armed presence there is no attack by the Janjawid.”

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Adrien Fenou, Chad analyst at the Global Insight forecasting group in London, said that the alliance between the governments of Sudan and Chad and rebel movements opposed to their neighbours is getting closer not more distant.

“Before, we saw Chadian rebels operating their back bases in Darfur and launching attacks in Chad and the other way around. Now we see a more straightforward alliance between the Chadian government and Sudanese rebels fighting the Sudan government,” he said.

“The alliances don’t function in a formal way, but there is a set of circumstances that force implicit alliances to occur,” Fenou said. “If the [anti-Khartoum rebel movement] helps the Chad government root out [anti-Chad] rebels then there is an understanding the government will allow them to exist. It’s not so formalised, and it is likely to change depending on the military realities.”

Khartoum is currently considering whether to allow a UN peacekeeping force to replace an African Union mission in the country, the mandate for which will expire at the end of the year.

Chad’s President Deby has asked that the UN does not ignore Chad and recommended it put its blue-helmeted soldiers on the ground there too.

Sunday’s attack has revealed a previously unheard of alliance of Chadian rebel groups, the Union of Forces for Democracy (UFD). Analysts said the UFD is a military and political amalgamation of three Chadian rebel groups, including the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) which was the largest group until it splintered earlier in the year.

Darfur: UN Says Pronk Has Full Support

From Reuters

Top U.N. envoy Jan Pronk left Khartoum on Monday after the Sudanese government raised the stakes in a running dispute with the world body by ordering him out of the country.

Khartoum was already on a collision course with the international community over its rejection of a U.N. Security Council resolution to send 22,500 U.N. troops and police to its violent western Darfur region. It calls the plan a Western invasion aimed at recolonising Sudan.

Sunday's order to expel Pronk came after he published comments on his Web site www.janpronk.nl saying the Sudanese army lost two major battles to rebels in North Darfur, morale was low, generals were sacked and soldiers refused to fight.

The remarks infuriated Sudan's powerful armed forces who called Pronk a threat to Sudanese security. Observers say his expulsion exacerbated existing tensions between the government in Khartoum and the United Nations.

"The hardliners within the government of Sudan are trying always to escalate the confrontation with the international community and Mr. Pronk has given them a good chance to succeed," said Faysal el-Bagir, head of the Khartoum human rights centre.

U.N. spokeswoman in Sudan Radhia Achouri said Pronk left on Monday night and was en route to New York. He was expected to brief the Security Council on the expulsion order on Wednesday.

Chief U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Pronk still has the full support of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who summoned him back for consultations. "As far as we are concerned, his status remains unchanged," Dujarric said at U.N. headquarters.

Pronk "continues to be the special representative of the secretary-general," Dujarric added.

Dujarric would not say whether Pronk's expulsion complicated efforts to move a U.N. peacekeeping force into Darfur to replace a smaller, ill-equipped African Union force now there.

From the AP

Secretary-General Kofi Annan still has full confidence in his top envoy in Sudan who was ordered to leave the country after accusing the army of violating U.N. resolutions by mobilizing Arab militias in Darfur province following heavy losses in recent fighting with rebels, the U.N. spokesman said Monday.

Jan Pronk, who has been Annan's special representative in Sudan for over two years, was leaving Khartoum, but U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric stressed that he was being recalled for consultations at Annan's request — and not departing to comply with the government's order.

Dujarric said Pronk was flying out of Khartoum Monday night and would be at U.N. headquarters on Wednesday for meetings with Annan and other senior U.N. officials. Meanwhile, the U.N. peacekeeping department asked to meet Sudan's U.N. ambassador Monday afternoon to discuss the government's letter to Annan requesting Pronk's withdrawal, he said.

"What needs to be clearly stated is that he continues to be the special representative of the secretary-general and serving with the full support of the secretary-general in that capacity," Dujarric said. "We are recalling him back for consultations. As far as we are concerned, his status has not changed."

Asked whether the secretary-general has full confidence in Pronk, Dujarric replied, "Yes he does."

Japan's U.N. Ambassador Kenzo Oshima, the current Security Council president, said the council will wait to hear what the secretary-general has to say. "Depending upon his reaction to it, the Security Council may have to be briefed and consider some possible action if that is necessary," he told AP.

Sudan/Darfur: Southern Anger at Expulsion

From the BBC

Sudan's southern former rebels, now government partners, have strongly condemned the decision to expel UN envoy Jan Pronk.

South Sudan Vice-President Riek Machar told the BBC his group had not been consulted over the decision, taken over Mr Pronk's comments on the Darfur war.

"His expulsion is going to make things worse in Darfur, Mr Machar said.

The former rebels joined the government under last year's peace deal but correspondents say relations are sour.

Mr Machar said that Mr Pronk had been appointed in consultations with both sides in the 21-year north-south war and his mission was not only related to Darfur.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says the incident is the latest rift between the two groups which signed a peace agreement in January 2005 ending decades of civil war.

The comprehensive peace agreement signed between Khartoum and the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) was supposed to end tensions between the mainly Muslim north of Sudan and the Christian and animist south.

SPLM leader Salva Kiir is national vice-president and there are several southern ministers in the government.

But our reporter says northerners believe the southerners are interfering in their affairs by supporting the deployment of UN troops in Darfur - something that President Omar al-Bashir is implacably opposed to.

The SPLM argues that Darfur is a national issue, and one in which they should fully participate.

[edit]

The south now feels marginalised, and anger over the issue is growing, our reporter says.

Some commentators warn that the peace agreement signed with so much fanfare in 2005 is now under serious threat.

Darfur: The Meticulous Cruelty of the Janjaweed

From Jonathan Erasmus - via POTP

Yesterday, I left the house tentatively. There was good reason to be tentative -- I would within hours be in one of the many heavily occupied Janjaweed territories in Darfur.

The plan was to go to three of the villages that had been attacked over the previous couple of months. I had been told the villages were now occupied again, and had been for the past few weeks. But the number of people was only a fraction of the original number of inhabitants, most of whom now fill the hundreds of refugee camps in Darfur.

We had been driving for just over an hour when the car stopped. The middle of a Janjaweed occupied territory was not a good place to break down. Fortunately, though, we had two cars so the towing began.

We reached the first village in just around two hours. It was quite a sight. The attackers had destroyed homes, burned roofs, and the crops along with them. The attacks had been vicious and the people suffered greatly. The Janjaweed are unpalatably cruel. They have been known to throw people on top of burning homes, behead fathers in front of their families and brutally rape women, in some reported instances, with gun-barrels.

They prey on the weak and vulnerable. The people in the villages are unarmed; they are truly defenceless, yet the Janjaweed attack them in the most barbaric manner, stealing what little these people have.

Mahman, one of the village Sheikhs, told me what had happened when the village was raided. It was an all too familiar story. He said: "We heard the sound of camels and horses approaching early in the morning. I feared it was the Janjaweed and it was. There was panic as people started to gather their families and flee. They were shooting at us, chasing us, burning our homes. They killed men, women and children and destroyed everything."

He added: "They didn't even stay. They just didn't want us here."

The journey continued onto the next village, the car still being towed. It was almost identical. The Janjaweed had attacked just six weeks ago. Very few people now live there, most having not returned from the camps.

Similarly most of the homes were destroyed. Burned roofs and collapsed mud walls. The handful of people who now lived there were hoping they would be safe from further attacks but knew it was a possibility.

It was getting dark so we did not make the last village as we needed to return to el-Fasher but I'm sure the story would have been the same. There is a pattern with the raids. They seem to be meticulous in their wickedness.

On the way back, not 10 miles from the city the driver slowed down. There were Janjaweed ahead of us in the road. Keeping on driving we passed them without being stopped. This was nothing but luck. A translator in the car told me he knew them and had been stopped by them before. "Last time," he said, "they took everything but the car."

On getting back I began thinking why these people would return when the Janjaweed were still in the area, but thinking about it I realised it was simple. The people who have returned have done so because the villages are their homes. They know there is a risk of being attacked again but they want to start rebuilding their lives. It is their land. They were born there and have lived there for many generations.

They can't fight back against attacks with weapons, and coming back they know is dangerous, but the village is all they have. It is everything. For them, coming back is not a matter of choice. It is a matter of necessity.

Darfur: Rice Criticizes Sudan's Expulsion of Pronk

From CNN

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized the Sudanese government Monday for kicking out the top U.N. official in the country, calling the decision "unfortunate in the extreme."

"The situation in Darfur is deteriorating and the international community needs to be able to act there," she said.

Rice told reporters before a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei that she would discuss the matter with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan later in the day.

Darfur: Grim New Turn May Harden Conflict

From the New York Times

Haroun Abdullah Kabir stepped from one bloodied corpse to another on the parched, rocky battlefield. He searched the soldiers’ decomposing faces for an aquiline nose, fair complexion or fine, straight hair: telltale Arab features.

Instead Mr. Kabir, a field commander of the Darfur rebels fighting the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, found among the Sudanese soldiers his men had felled only the dark-skinned faces of southern Sudanese and Darfurians. He looked away in disgust.

“You see, they send black men to kill black men,” he said. “We are waiting for them to send Arabs for a real fight.”

This is the new battlefield in Darfur, a blood-soaked land in which at least 200,000 people have died since early 2003, many of hunger and disease, as a result of a campaign of violence the Bush administration and others have called genocide.

For the first time in more than two years, rebels fighting the government for more autonomy are making brazen, direct and successful attacks on soldiers, and are declaring that all previous cease-fires are no longer in effect.

The latest peace agreement, signed in May and heavily backed by the United States but approved by only one rebel faction and the Sudanese government, is in disarray.

The government vows to crush the rebellion, and as its military struggles to fend of attacks, it will likely turn again to Arab militias called janjaweed to wage its counterinsurgency campaign, analysts say.

A visit to the site of the newest fighting, the first by a journalist, revealed a hardening conflict that is increasingly taking place along porous borders among some of the least stable countries in Africa, threatening to ignite a wide conflagration in the heart of the continent.

The Darfur rebels are flush with arms taken from the Sudanese military in raids and bought through allies in Chad and Eritrea. They say that because Sudan has blocked a United Nations force from entering Darfur to protect the 2.5 million people forced from their homes there and eastern Chad, they have a duty to stop attacks on non-Arab tribes.

“The international community will not do it,” said Gen. Khatir Toor Khala, a rebel field commander based on the border. “So it is for us to protect the innocent civilians of Darfur.”

With the two sides apparently bent on all-out war, and millions of displaced people and refugees caught in the middle, the people of Darfur and the aid workers who have been trying to help them await the next, seemingly inevitable onslaught.

“We don’t know what will happen next, we only fear for our lives,” said Kaltuma Ardy, who fled attacks by the janjaweed on her village in Darfur near the Chad border three years ago. She now lives in Oure Cassoni refugee camp, a few miles from the site of the battle between rebels and government soldiers. “We need the U.N. to come and help us so we can have peace and go back home.”

The prospect of new talks to settle the crisis has dimmed, and the involvement of Chad and now the Central African Republic, where Sudan reportedly supports rebels hoping to topple Chad’s government, is spawning a complex, connected set of conflicts.

Now that the rains have ended, and the rushing seasonal rivers have dried up, clearing the way for the truck-mounted guns that are at the heart of any African ground war, combat has started anew.

The rebel alliance, now known as the National Redemption Front, has inflicted at least two humiliating defeats on the Sudanese Army.

One of those battles took place on Oct. 7 in an army camp 13 miles northeast of Bahai, a sleepy border outpost in Chad that is home to one of the region’s largest refugee camps. The camp was strewn with the bodies of dozens of Sudanese soldiers.

Some lay in contorted poses of flight, others were in jumbled heaps in trenches, apparently gunned down in their fighting positions — a still-ticking watch and shattered eyeglasses glinting in the sun. At least one soldier appeared to have been killed while still in bed, sprawled half on, half off a bed in a straw hut, his trousers unbuckled, swollen belly bursting forth. Another seemed to have been caught while playing cards, a jack of spades lay just beyond his extended index finger.

Rebel commanders led a reporter and a photographer to the spot of their triumph clearly wanting to trumpet their victory, but they also seemed disappointed that almost all of the dead soldiers appeared to be non-Arab recruits, mostly southerners and Darfurians. “All of them are Sudanese, they are black people, they are our brothers,” Mr. Kabir said. “The government sent them here to kill us, but we pity them. The janjaweed don’t like to die and make war with us. They are cowards attacking women and children.”

The rebels had picked the camp clean of matériel, carrying off several senior Sudanese field commanders as prisoners, they said, as well as significant caches of heavy weapons, machine guns, fuel tankers and pickup trucks.

At a hide-out a few miles away, soldiers preened with their new weapons: Chinese-made rockets, grenade launchers and antitank guns.

“We took this from Sudan, and we will use it to kill them,” boasted Salah Arjah Boush, a rebel fighter, cradling a small gray rocket like a baby in his arms.

Adam Shogar, a spokesman for the National Redemption Front based in Ndjamena, the capital of Chad, said that the new rebel alliance was not bound by any previous cease-fires and was ready to fight if the government refused to open new negotiations. The May agreement was not acceptable, he said.

“It is all-out war,” Mr. Shogar said. “There are no agreements.”

Exactly what shape the conflict will take is not clear, and the methods the government and rebels choose to attack each other will have grim consequences for the millions of Darfurians pushed from their homes.

The battle in Darfur has long been a proxy, fought with villages and towns as battlefields and civilians as its primary victims. Rebel groups — at least half a dozen factions and splinter groups have surfaced since the conflict began — occupy villages, which the government attacks by air with Antonov bombers and gunships. The rumble of the aircraft gives the fighters plenty of time to escape, but the less-mobile civilians bear the brunt of the aerial attacks.

Because Sudan’s large army is mostly made up of non-Arab foot soldiers who are unwilling to carry out brutal counterinsurgency tactics on fellow non-Arabs, the government has used Arab militias as ground troops in Darfur, paying them in cash and loot from the villages they raid. But now the fighting appears to be entering a new phase, in which the rebel groups, somewhat unified militarily under the banner of the National Redemption Front, are making increasingly brazen direct attacks on government troops.

The government is likely to respond to this new boldness with familiar tactics, said Colin Thomas-Jensen, Africa advocacy and research manager at the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that seeks to resolve armed conflict.

“Clearly Khartoum is still intent on pursing a military solution, and just because the latest offensive seems to have hit a roadblock doesn’t mean they are going to give up,” Mr. Thomas-Jensen said. “The strategy in the past has always been to arm and train and support local militia groups. In all of this the consequences from a humanitarian standpoint are devastating. In Darfur it is ultimately among the civilians that there will be the greatest cost.”

So far, in this part of Darfur, the response has been mostly aerial attacks. Bombers have flown incessantly over Bahai and other border towns, dropping bombs on areas suspected of being rebel hide-outs.

The rebellion is bracing for a new onslaught from the government and its allied militias, meeting in Birmaza, a town in North Darfur, to cement their alliance and discuss strategy, said Jar al-Nabi Abdul Karim, a commander of the National Redemption Front, in a satellite telephone interview from there. “We are united, and we are strong,” he said. “We are ready to fight.”

Darfur: Sudan Orders U.N. Envoy to Leave Country/Pronk Prepares to Leave

From the New York Times [The blog post at the center of this controversy can be found here.]

Sudan’s government ordered the chief United Nations envoy out of the country today, saying he was an enemy of the country and its armed forces.

Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he was reviewing the letter from the Khartoum government and had requested the envoy, Jan Pronk, to return to New York for “consultations.”

The Sudanese order said he had to leave by Wednesday. United Nations officials confirmed he would depart before then.

Mr. Pronk, a blunt-spoken former Dutch cabinet minister, has been outspoken in reporting on the killings, rapes and other atrocities in Darfur, the region in the western part of Sudan where 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes.

He has become increasingly pointed in his comments because of the rise in violence across the area despite a May peace accord between the Sudanese government and a major rebel group, and because of the government’s refusal to grant permission for a new United Nations force to take over peacekeeping in the country from the overstretched African Union.

Mr. Pronk is known as a forceful presence at the United Nations from his frequent appearances before the Security Council, where he characteristically delivers unflinching accounts of the continuing mayhem and political breakdowns in Sudan in a rhetorical style that includes finger-jabbing and dramatic pauses for emphasis.

[edit]

The fact that one of its top officials has put sensitive findings in a personal blog has embarrassed the United Nations and put its officials in an awkward position. When the matter arose Friday, United Nations officials resisted rebuking Mr. Pronk for the practice for fear that it would appear to be a vote of no confidence in the mission, rather than just in his professional lapse.

Questioned repeatedly on Friday over whether the United Nations stood by the statements in Mr. Pronk’s blog, Stéphane Dujarric, Mr. Annan’s spokesman, said, “Those views are expressed by Pronk, are his personal views.”

Mr. Dujarric indicated that this was not the first time a problem with Mr. Pronk’s blog had come up. “There have been a number of discussions with Mr. Pronk regarding his blog and the expectation of all staff members to exercise proper judgment in what they write in their blogs,” he said.

In a statement distributed by the official Sudanese news agency today, the country’s Foreign Ministry accused Mr. Pronk of demonstrating “enmity to the Sudanese government and the armed forces” and of involvement in activities “that are incompatible with his mission.”

The activity in question was apparently a trip that Mr. Pronk made into Darfur to make direct contact with rebels.

[edit]

Victor Tanner, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advance International Studies who returned from Sudan a week ago, said the blog’s references to defeats suffered by the Sudanese army had caused a furor there.

“Comments on the disarray that seemed to be reigning within the Sudanese armed forces was an amazing thing to see in the blog of a U.N. official,” he said. “Refreshing but wild.”

“That the armed forces had suffered these losses was something that everybody was talking about as a rumor swarming around Khartoum and Darfur, but it took on a new reality and became ‘the truth’ when it was uttered in print by Pronk.”

In Washington, the State Department said it was withholding comment until it learned more from Khartoum about the incident.

Amnnesty International in New York said it “condemns in the strongest terms” the ouster of Mr. Pronk. “By declaring Mr. Pronk persona non grata, Khartoum has once again demonstrated heinous dispassion toward the well-being of its own citizens,” the organization said.

In London, the Foreign Office also denounced the Sudanese move and called for it to be reversed. “This step is counter-productive and will contribute nothing to solving the problems of Sudan,” said Lord David Triesman, a foreign office minister. “I call upon the government of Sudan to reconsider its decision.”

In what has become a tense standoff with the United Nations, Sudan has adamantly refused to accept the deployment of 22,000 United Nations soldiers and police officers despite public outcries over the increasing danger to the residents of Darfur.

From Reuters

U.N. envoy to Sudan Jan Pronk prepared to leave Khartoum on Monday after the African country's government raised the stakes in a running dispute with the world body by ordering Pronk to leave.

Khartoum was already on a collision course with the international community over its rejection of a U.N. Security Council resolution to send 22,500 U.N. troops to its violent western Darfur region. It calls the plan a Western invasion aimed at recolonising Sudan.

Sunday's order to expel the most powerful U.N. official in Sudan has Pronk packing his things to leave after more than two years at the head of a difficult mission in a war-torn country and observers saying the move exacerbates existing tensions.

"The hardliners with the government of Sudan are trying always to escalate the confrontation with the international community and Mr. Pronk has given them a good chance to succeed," said Faysal el-Bagir, head of the Khartoum human rights centre.

Pronk published comments on his web site www.janpronk.nl saying the army had lost two major battles with rebels in North Darfur, morale was low, generals were being sacked and soldiers refusing to fight, comments which infuriated Sudan's powerful armed forces.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry said it would continue to cooperate with Pronk's replacement and the United Nations. EU ambassador in Sudan Kent Dagerfeld said he regretted Khartoum's decision to expel Pronk.

"We would like the government to reconsider its decision," he said.

Described by a U.N. source as "somewhat bemused" Pronk cancelled his travel plans for the rest of the week and will head to New York on Monday following a summons from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He will not return.

[edit]


Some observers questioned whether the expulsion was little more than political theatre because Pronk, as Annan's political appointee, was likely to lose his position when Annan left the world body at the end of the year.

"Mr. Pronk...his period is nearly finished so it is more political manoeuvre than genuine political action from the government," said el-Bagir.

Others said Pronk himself may have made a political move to "go out with a bang." Only three months earlier Pronk had similar problems with comments he wrote on his blog that changes needed to be made to the Darfur peace deal, signed in May by only one of three negotiating rebel factions.

"He is very savvy. He must have known what the government's reaction would be to this," said one diplomat who declined to be named. One U.N. source said Pronk had already been warned by U.N. headquarters in New York about his blog.

Known among Sudanese as the "governor general", a reference to former British colonial rule, Pronk had irked many different parties but had a reputation of being fair and hard-working.

Some observers said whoever replaces Pronk is likely to be less outspoken and Darfur rebels hailed his expulsion as a victory for those who want to silence criticism of Khartoum.

"The government is trying to muffle all the free voices in Sudan," said Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim. "Now the world will not know what is really happening in Darfur."

Chad: Rebels Attack Eastern Town

From the BBC

Fighting has broken out in the town of Goz Beida in eastern Chad, reports say.

Up to 60 rebel vehicles were said to have entered the town, which is about 100 miles (161km) from the Sudanese border.

Rebels claimed to be in control of the town, but a government spokesman said that the rebel attack had been "repelled" by the army.

There was no information on casualties, but an aid worker said shots had been heard in the town.

"Our forces have taken over this evening the town of Goz Beida," Acheikh Ibn Oumar told the French news agency AFP.

"There was fighting but government forces didn't resist long," he said.

Mr Oumar claimed to speak for three rebel groups which had just decided to form a Union of Forces for Democracy, the agency said.

The new alliance comprises Mr Oumar's Democratic Revolutionary Council (CDR), the Union of Forces for Progress and Democracy (UFPD) and the United Front for Change (FUC).

But government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, while confirming that "the rebel forces infiltrated Goz Beida", said the military had fought off the attack.

From Reuters

A newly formed rebel group attacked a town in remote eastern Chad near the border with Sudan on Sunday but the government said on Monday its forces had repelled the assault and were back in control.

"The rebels infiltrated the town of Goz Beida in the east of Chad at around 1600 (1500 GMT). They were pushed back by the Chadian national army," Communication Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told Reuters by telephone.

He had no immediate details on casualties.

The insurgents, calling themselves the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) -- the latest in a string of titles apparently meant to group various rebel factions, said the attack was meant as a wake-up call for the government.

"We want to make the government in N'Djamena and our partners realise that the situation can't go on like this," Acheikh Ibn Oumar, a Paris-based rebel spokesman who said he represented the UFDD, told French radio.

"There has to be a solution that restores state order, organises true democratic polls and ends the catastrophic way the state is being run."

[edit]

An aid worker in Goz Beida, which lies just over 100 km (60 miles) from the border with Darfur and is home to thousands of displaced civilians, said there had been shooting shortly before the rebels arrived in the town.

"They came to our office. They spoke to us and behaved well ... They said they were rebels from the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD)," the aid worker said.

"Before they arrived we heard shooting but nothing after that ... They took control of the town and the main roads out to (the towns of) Abeche and Ade ... They left overnight and the situation is calm this morning."

Darfur: Searching For Jacob

From last night's "60 Minutes"

It hardly seems possible, but the genocide in Darfur is taking a turn for the worse. The government in Sudan has launched a new offensive, maybe trying to finish what it started three years ago. As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, more than 300,000 people are dead and more than two million are refugees in the Sahara.

To understand what is happening in Darfur, 60 Minutes came upon on the story of a boy named Jacob. We know him only because his name is on schoolbooks found in the ashes of his home. Jacob's village was wiped out. Our team saw his books in a museum. We didn't know whether Jacob was alive or whether we could find him. But we decided to try. Our search turned into a remarkable journey into a place we were forbidden to travel looking for a boy swept up in the 21st century's first genocide.

[edit]

There were more children in the clinic. Ashis Brahma is the camp doctor. One doctor for 25,000 people.

"We have very simple drugs here but I’m doing funky medicine, voodoo medicine or bush medicine," Dr. Brahma explains. "I’m doing what we can here with the medicines we have without equipment."

Our team met a starving child framed like a picture against that vibrant culture that used to be with little certainty of a future. Dr. Brahma was hopeful for this girl, suffering with meningitis, but she died in just a few hours.

"What is it that you think people don’t understand about what’s going on here now?" Pelley asks Dr. Brahma.

"This is bad. They go to the villages, and they burn one village after the other, then when the people come out they catch the women and gang bang, they rape them not one guy, no 10, 15 then they carve up the men and throw them in the drinking water to make sure that this place will never ever be used again. And you’re telling me the people in America don’t know this or don’t want to know this. Maybe its too much to know but that’s what’s happening right now and its happening all over again," Dr. Brahma says. "I’m sorry to say I’m going to sit here with you in two years time and I’m gonna tell you the same sad story. People will say, 'Ich habe nicht gewusst,' which is German for 'I didn’t know.'"

Darfur: Aid Agency Warns of 'Powder Keg' in Camp

From Merlin

Aid workers in Darfur are struggling to cope with a rapid rise in the number of people fleeing villages amidst increasing instability, British medical agency Merlin said today.

Merlin was forced to evacuate its base in Gereida - the region's largest camp for displaced people - three weeks ago when an armed group attempted to take over the town. An emergency medical unit has since been re-established in the camp and is treating 400 people a day.

Over the past month, clashes around Gereida have put more than 100,000 people at risk. Merlin's medical staff estimate that more than 60 per cent of patients seen are war widows and their children, many of whom have suffered severe burns, deep cuts and fractures. Pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea are the most serious medical problems faced by people in the camp, with many cases exacerbated by malnutrition.

"By the time we see the children in the clinic, they are often in advanced stages of pneumonia or malaria or both," said a Merlin doctor working Gereida. "Babies are often brought in when they are beginning to convulse from high fever and are breathing poorly. Patients like these should be in a hospital with constant oxygen and intravenous medication. In the camp clinic, we are able to provide emergency treatment that is suited to the environment. Most deaths occur because the infection is just too advanced for treatment.

"The population is under constant stress because of the extreme heat, lack of food and hard physical work required in their daily tasks. People cannot go far from the camp during the daytime because they risk being attacked, and movement is not possible at night. Some do venture out to get food, water and firewood, but it is dangerous, especially for young women and girls."

Carolyn Miller, Merlin Chief Executive, said: "Our 20-strong team in Gereida are on constant alert. The conflict flared up three weeks ago very suddenly and without warning. The team was airlifted to safety by UN helicopters along with staff from several other aid agencies. Although we have since been able to re-start the emergency clinic, we are concerned that the situation in Gereida will deteriorate further.

"We are monitoring the situation very closely. While taking all precautions to protect our workers, we are acutely aware that the region is a powder keg and that the lives of more than 100,000 people hang in the balance."

At around the same time as the incident in Gereida, thousands of people were forced out of the Muhajariya area in South Darfur, where several settlements have reportedly been destroyed. Up to 30,000 people are now dispersed across a 20km zone, and are in desperate need of water, food, shelter and medical aid. Together with other NGOs operating in the region, Merlin is attempting to respond to these needs.

Darfur: Blaming Bush

From the American Spectator

The genocide of black African Muslims in Darfur is possibly the world's most bizarre genocide. It has no perpetrators, but somehow is abetted by George W. Bush.

At least that is what one would assume by reading the full-page advertisement in the October 16 Washington Post, which also ran in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The ad was from Evangelicals for Darfur, a coalition of "conservatives and progressives" organized with help from religious left activist Jim Wallis of Sojourners.

It is the latest in a long line of advocacy appeals for Darfur that address President George W. Bush as if he were at best (!) Kofi Annan, and at worst, Sudanese Islamist dictator Omar el-Bashir, or perhaps even a janjaweed militia commander. The parties that should actually be addressed regarding the ongoing jihad in Western Sudan are Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (formerly the National Islamic Front) and its proxy militias. But they are strangely unmentioned in the ad.

Evangelicals for Darfur describe themselves as coming "from across the evangelical spectrum." As someone who has worked on Sudan advocacy since 1995, and knows that "yes, Virginia, there really was a genocide in Sudan prior to Darfur," I wonder why it took until now for many of these concerned voices suddenly to speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum waged a genocidal war against the non-Muslim southern party of the country for two decades, killing 2 million. That was war was finally negotiated to an end with essential help by the Bush Administration.

A few of the signatories have been to southern Sudan or have been a part of the Washington-based Sudan Coalition founded by Nina Shea of Freedom House and myself. They should explain to the latecomers that President Bush has done more for persecuted people in Sudan than anyone before him.

Frankly, I wish our Sudan Coalition could have had the funds for full-page newspaper ads when the Nuba people were being ethnically cleansed with scorched-earth, aerial bombardment, and starvation. (The ad in the Washington Post and other major papers by itself cost over a half million dollars.) Or when Sudanese government-orchestrated famine threatened the lives of three million in Wau, Southern Sudan. Or when southern Sudanese women and children were being branded and sold into slavery. Or when 40,000+ mostly Dinka young boys fled from their villages and walked to Ethiopia and have lived as displaced persons in a harsh, impoverished refugee camp in Kenya since then. Or when some 2,000 of these "Lost Boys" arrived for resettlement in the United States and needed sponsorship and mentoring in order to not fall through the cracks here in America. You get the point.

But then I consider how much good hundreds of thousands of dollars could actually do for the people of Sudan. For instance, in the Nuba Mountains right now there are over two thousand Darfurian refugees who have nothing. The Nuba, both Christians and Muslims, are sharing what little they have with them, but food supplies are dwindling. The UN's World Food Program has been assured by Khartoum that "they will take care of things in the Nuba Mountains." Yes, well, we know what that means.

While some Darfurians have fled to Chad, and others further into southern Sudan, these refugees walked for almost a thousand miles to get to the Nuba Mountains. They fled from Darfur, where, as one young woman told an American who recently visited the area, she had watched as they killed her family, including her 80 year-old-grandfather, "slicing them up like meat."

These Darfurians know that over 400,000 of their countrymen and women described by the Washington Post ad in the passive "have been killed" were killed by somebody! They were killed by emissaries of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir, who wants to rid Sudan of every black African Sudanese, whether Christian or Muslim. These Darfurians know that the 2.5 million "displaced" were forced from their homes and land by the same Arabist Islamist regime that displaced over 5 million in southern Sudan.

Unfortunately, the Evangelicals for Darfur seem only to want to lay the onus on George W. Bush. "Without you, Mr. President, Darfur doesn't have a prayer," its ad headline reads. "We beseech you to act on your faith and do the right thing by leading the world to stop the genocide affecting 'the least of these' in Darfur." This coalition of "conservatives and progressives" is headquartered with Jim Wallis's religious left group Sojourners.

Horn of Africa: Fears of Jihad

From the Chicago Tribune

Four months after Islamists seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu, promising a return to order and peace in war-ravaged Somalia, the Horn of Africa country and its neighbors sit at the brink of a new and potentially deadly conflict.

Somali Islamists, furious that Ethiopian troops have crossed the border to support Somalia's Western-backed secular government, have called for jihad against Ethiopia, raising fears that Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, could suffer bombings or other guerrilla attacks.

Ethiopia, the region's military powerhouse, accuses Islamist leaders of terrorist ties and remains determined to deny the movement control of Somalia. It helped Somalia's weak government push the movement out of the southern town of Bur Haqaba, handing the Islamists their first military setback.

With Islamist troops just 60 miles from the government's base in Baidoa, about a thousand Somali refugees a day are streaming over the border into Kenya, fearing new conflict, according to the United Nations.

What's ahead for Somalia is probably "chronic low-intensity war," said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College in North Carolina. That makes any promises by the Islamists to effectively rebuild the shattered nation hard to fulfill, he said.

In recent months, the Union of Islamic Courts -- a loose group of Islamists who had been running makeshift local courts in lawless Somalia--has seized ever-larger sections of the country, most recently taking the third-largest city, Kismayo.

While the Islamists have faced some local protests, particularly over their ban on the use of khat, a commonly chewed narcotic plant, the country's de facto leaders have enjoyed broad support from Somalis tired of years of anarchy.

"Most Somalis still believe they're the best option and are unwaveringly behind them," said Abdirahman Mohamed, a Somali doctor working in Zambia who has served as an adviser to both the Islamists and the country's transitional federal government.

While radical members of the Islamic coalition, including Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, have in recent months risen to prominence, raising fears of Taliban-like rule in Somalia, most Somalis continue to look at Sheik Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a respected moderate cleric, as the country's most likely future president, Mohamed said.

But the growing war of words with Ethiopia threatens to give the radicals--many of them the movement's military leaders--the upper hand.

Ethiopia has long looked at Somalia, its lawless neighbor, as a threat. Nationalistic Somali leaders have for decades dreamed of seizing land settled by ethnic Somalis that is now part of Ethiopia and Kenya and reuniting a Greater Somalia. Somalia's Islamists in recent months also have accepted weapons from Eritrea, Ethiopia's bitter enemy, and Somalia has served as a conduit for training and military supplies for two armed Ethiopian insurgencies.

Ethiopia, however, also has enraged Somalis by sending troops--the government insisted Thursday they are only military trainers--into Somalia to assist the country's weak secular government, which returned to Somalia from exile in Kenya last year.

That has allowed the Islamist movement to win over not just the minority of Somalis who support its desire to institute a Shariah-based Islamic justice system but the hugely nationalistic majority who see incursions of Ethiopian troops as a national insult.

By mobilizing for jihad against Ethiopia, the Islamists "give themselves broader support than they otherwise would have," Menkhaus said.

Darfur: Rebels Say Militias Attack Villages

From Reuters

Armed militia have looted and attacked civilians and raped two girls in villages in the Nena area of North Darfur, rebels said on Sunday.

Despite a May peace deal violence has escalated in Sudan's remote west where experts say 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes.

"The Janjaweed attacked villages in Nena yesterday and raped two girls ... aged 16 and 18," said Jar el-Naby, a rebel commander in North Darfur.

"Government troops are also mobilising in this area, and we are prepared for an attack," Naby said.

Nena is about 100 kilometres northwest of el-Fasher, Darfur's main town. Janjaweed, derived loosely from the Arabic for devils on horseback, are militias accused of a campaign of rape, pillage and murder which Washington calls genocide.

Khartoum denies genocide and any links to Janjaweed, calling them bandits.

One African Union source confirmed the heavy build-up of troops around the area in North Darfur, which has seen fighting between the rebels and government over the past few months.

Darfur: Sudan Masses Its Troops for a Decisive Strike

From the Telegraph

The soldier pushed at the bomb with his foot, rolling it through the dust towards the white Russian-built Antonov aircraft standing on the runway of El Fasher airport.

The plane was being loaded for another bombing run, as Sudanese government forces gear up for a military onslaught when Ramadan ends today or tomorrow.

Crude but effective, the Antonovs are back in the air over the villages of Darfur, just as they were during the initial pogroms that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced more than two million. When they reach their targets, the soldiers lower the ramps and kick out the bombs – which look like munitions used in the Second World War – to explode on those below.

New arrivals at the El Salaam camp outside Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, describe how the Antonovs and helicopter gunships attacked their villages, forcing them to flee.

"I saw about 10 bombs falling," said Adam Ishag, who fled his village of Hila Babkeir after it came under attack. "They exploded beside the houses and two were destroyed. We took the children and we ran away."

[edit]

Planes carrying soldiers have poured into El Fasher airport, bringing with them vast quantities of weapons. On Wednesday evening, traffic in the centre of town ground to a halt as a military convoy, perhaps 100 vehicles long, rolled by – some packed with men, others with machineguns and rocket launchers.

Both the government and the rebels – many now fighting under the banner of the newly formed National Redemption Front – fear that if the UN does take over from the hopelessly stretched African Union (AU) force, then there will be little chance of seizing more territory. If they have to renegotiate the peace agreement, they intend to do so from a position of strength.

"It is a stand-off with the US and some European governments, including Britain," said Ghazi Atabani, a Sudanese presidential adviser, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph last week. His government argues that it is now fighting a legitimate "war on terror" against those who refused to sign up to the peace deal. But Mr Atabani conceded that talks would have to come. "Even if you win the military battle, it is a loss," he said. "In the end, it will just lead to another rebellion."

Yet military victory itself is far from certain. UN and AU sources report that the Sudanese army is demoralised and vulnerable. It has suffered two heavy defeats in the past month – including one in which 3,000 troops were reportedly routed in 20 minutes.

Unlike the earlier war in southern Sudan, which pitched mainly Muslim government forces against Christian and animist rebels, Darfur is an almost exclusively Muslim conflict. "It is not a question of religion this time, it is a question of power," said Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, an aid worker and fierce critic of the government.

The AU has said it does not want to stay on after December 31, when its mandate runs out. And there appears no prospect of a UN force of 22,500 troops arriving before spring.

For those caught in the -middle, life is looking desperate. Aid workers cannot operate effectively; at least a dozen have been killed since the peace deal was signed. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that 500,000 people are now cut off from aid.

"Life has always been precarious in Darfur," said a spokesman. "It will never be an easy place to live. But it doesn't have to be the living hell it is now."

Darfur: Divisions Intensify as Families Join Rebels

From the Telegraph

The man who governs the war-torn state of North Darfur has revealed that some of his own family are now supporting rebel groups fighting against the Sudanese authorities.

In a rare interview, Osman Yusuf Kiber, Wali of North Darfur, said the conflict had become so complex that families were being torn apart by divided loyalties.

The conflict in Darfur is often explained as a clash between black African farmers and government-backed Arab nomads. But Mr Kiber said it reflected more complex divisions in Darfuri society.

"My own village has been destroyed," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was burned by rebels. My brothers and relatives have been killed."

Despite that personal tragedy and the divisions the conflict had caused within his own family, he said he believed the Sudanese government was right to continue its campaign against those who had refused to sign up to the Darfur Peace Agreement. "It is a war," he said. "So if that [Sudanese air raids] has happened it is because the government has a duty to defend its people."

Mr Kiber said that only when both sides were prepared to negotiate would there be an end to the killing. Even then, the legacy of the conflict would long outlive the fighting: "There is a local social problem because if families are split there will be personal enmities."

The solution, he said, lay reverting to traditional tribal systems for resolving disputes. "It is difficult for the international community or the government to solve – people themselves must do it."

He opposed any intervention by the UN and called for the African Union to be given more resources to build up its own Darfur mission – a view that has been echoed by the Sudanese government in recent days.

Britain, like the United States, is convinced that a UN force is needed. But the Sudanese presidential adviser, Ghazi Atabani, rejected the prospect. "UN troops would be targeted and become an instrument of instability."

The Sudanese government has been wrong-footed by pressure to back down. Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is pressing President Omar al-Bashir to compromise. But Khartoum has been taken aback by the criticism from such an unexpected source, and claims that those involved have been bought off by the West. "African countries can change their views and positions very quickly, depending on the incentives they get," Mr Atabani said.

Darfur: Sudan Orders Pronk to Leave Within 3 Days

From Reuters

Sudan on Sunday ordered the top U.N. envoy, Jan Pronk, to leave the country within three days following comments he made that the army's morale was low after suffering two major defeats in the violent Darfur region.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig said Pronk had until mid-day Wednesday to leave.

"The reason is the latest statements issued by Mr. Pronk on his Web site regarding severe criticism of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the fact that he said the government of Sudan is not implementing the Darfur peace agreement," al-Sadig added.

He said the Foreign Ministry met with Pronk on Sunday and had informed him of its decision.

Pronk has previously had problems with the government because of comments he published on his Web log www.janpronk.nl. The latest blog entry said Darfur rebels had beaten the army in two major battles in the last two months.

He said generals had been sacked, morale was low and soldiers were refusing to fight in North Darfur. The army was furious and issued a statement on Friday calling Pronk a danger to the nation's security.

One army source said they were asking President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the commander-in-chief of the army, to expel Pronk.

Pronk's spokeswoman declined comment. U.N. officials in New York were not immediately available to react to the decision.

Darfur: Weekly News

The weekly news round-up from the Genocide Intervention Network

Violence continues in North Darfur where government aircrafts dropped bombs killing an eight-year-old child. In El Fasher, Janjaweed fighters clashed with members of the former rebel Sudanese Liberation Movement. Clashes crossed the border into Chad, where at least 10 villages have been attacked in the last two weeks. Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, unyielding to international pressure, renewed his refusal of the employment of a UN peacekeeping force during US Special Envoy Andrew Natsios' visit to Sudan. Members of the rebel National Redemption Front say they are prepared to begin new peace talks, in hopes of gaining autonomy for the Darfur region.

Uganda/Sudan: 15 Arrested Over Civilian Killings

From Reuters

South Sudan's military has arrested 15 suspected north Sudanese troops in connection with a string of attacks last week that killed at least 38 civilians, a top south Sudanese general said on Sunday.

South Sudan is hosting peace talks between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, both of whom accused the other of carrying out Wednesday's ambushes between the southern capital Juba and the eastern banks of the Nile.

"We arrested 15 armed men in connection with the ambushes and we killed two when they fired at us," said Major-General Wilson Deng Kuoirot, who heads an independent monitoring team at the Uganda peace talks.

"All were Sudanese attempting to attack a village near Juba. It is not established whether it was they who did the ambush, but we are investigating," he told Reuters by telephone.

The attacks had appeared to bear the hallmarks of the LRA, who long terrorised villagers in lawless parts of southern Sudan. The Ugandan guerrillas set up bases there in the mid-1990s and were supported by Khartoum as a proxy force against its own rebels.

Deng said he suspected the men were "elements of (Arabic-speaking northern) Sudan Armed Forces".

"They were speaking Arabic. My belief is they were pretending to be LRA to attack and loot civilians," he said.

Under a north-south peace deal, all Sudanese militias were instructed to join the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) or the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The SPLA must leave the north and the SAF are to vacate the south.

But since the January 2005 deal not all militias have joined the armies and the SPLA has accused the SAF of continuing to arm and support militia in the south.

The SAF had no immediate comment.

Deng said if it turned out Sudanese forces were behind the ambushes "that would clear the LRA".

The south has long been a tinderbox of armed men and bandits taking advantage of various conflicts to kill and rob civilians.

The LRA held up the arrests as proof they were respecting a ceasefire signed with the Ugandan government in August.

"I gave orders to my people to respect (it)," the LRA's deputy chief Vincent Otti told Reuters by satellite phone from his jungle hideout.

"I was saying these ambushes were not us all along, but still we get blamed. In fact, it was (the) Sudanese."

Otti denied a report in a Ugandan Sunday newspaper he had ordered his fighters to attack Ugandan soldiers in south Sudan.

"I said they should defend themselves in case of any attack (by the military), but not shoot first," Otti said.

Uganda: LRA Says Museveni Abused Them

From Reuters

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met rebel negotiators of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for the first time on Saturday to try to revive talks aimed at ending one of Africa's longest and most brutal wars.

Museveni and his aides made no comment about the private unscheduled half-hour meeting at south Sudan's parliament building. But a rebel official said the discussion was one-sided, and that the Ugandan leader had "abused" them.

"He spent all that fuel in the presidential jet and all that taxpayers' money just to tell us we know nothing about Uganda and are foreigners," LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayoo told Reuters.

"We were not given the opportunity to talk back, and after he abused us for five minutes, he just left."

Most of the LRA negotiators come from Uganda's Diaspora.

Ayoo said Museveni tried to shake hands with Josephine Apira, the one female member of the rebel delegation, but she refused and asked him to apologise for killings by his army.

"He said, 'This is rubbish' and walked out," Ayoo said. "It was an exchange that suggests we still have a long way to go. It was not meaningful. ... It did not improve things in any way."

In a speech later to south Sudan's parliament, Museveni hinted at his frustration in dealing with the insurgents, who he has often denounced as fugitives, terrorists and bandits.

He hailed southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar, who is the chief mediator at the stop-start peace talks, as a "very, very persistent person".

"He knows how to deal with the unserious LRA. If it were me..." he told parliament, without finishing his sentence.

Chad/Darfur: Thousands Flee Janjawid Attacks

From Amnesty International

Amnesty International today called on the Chadian government to deploy immediately along the border with Sudan to protect civilians from Janjawid attacks taking place in eastern Chad.

"Again civilians are being targeted by Janjawid, again the Chadian army is failing to protect them -- and the international community has not even begun to implement the Chad components of a UN Security Council resolution passed six weeks ago," said Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International.

"These attacks against civilians in Chad show us yet again how urgent the need is for an immediate deployment of UN peacekeepers in Sudan not only to stop attacks against people in Darfur but also to stop cross-border attacks into Chad."

Amnesty International called for the establishment of a UN presence in key locations in Chad and the deployment of UN forces in Darfur to monitor transborder activities of armed groups along the Sudanese border, as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 1706, adopted on 17 September.

According to information obtained by the organization, the new wave of attacks across the Chad/Sudan border started on 3 October and have continued since then.

Dozens of people have been killed and some 3,000 have fled in the past week -- some from villages that have been attacked, others from villages they fear will be attacked. One UNHCR camp housing 3,500 Chadians displaced in Habile has already reached its maximum capacity, with further attacks expected.

Over the last ten days, close to a dozen villages in eastern Chad have been attacked, with at least forty people killed -- including an imam and his four sons in Tamadjour on 15 October. In one attack in Marmadingue in Koloy canton, men on horseback attacked villagers working in their fields, killing 22 men and one woman.

Fleeing villagers described the attackers as Janjawid wearing Sudanese army uniforms.

As this is the period of harvest, many displaced are venturing back to their villages to attempt to harvest their crops -- leaving them vulnerable to further attacks.

"We warned that these attacks were likely to resume once the rainy season ended, and now they have started, as we predicted," said Kate Gilmore. "These attacks could have been avoided if the Chadian government and the international community had listened to earlier warnings and acted in advance to protect civilians in eastern Chad."

"The Chadian government now needs to ensure that its army patrols the area and monitors the border closely to stop further attacks."

Darfur: UN Receives Reports of Deadly Government Bombing, Arrest of Aid Workers

From the UN News Center

Amid increasing insecurity in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, the United Nations mission in the country has received reports that a Government aircraft bombed an area in North Darfur, killing an eight-year-old boy, and that two aid workers were arrested in the south of the region.

The reports to the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said the aircraft “dropped an unconfirmed number of bombs” near Birmaza yesterday, spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

Referring to the arrests in the south, he said that two staff members from an international non-governmental organization (NGO) had reportedly been arrested on Tuesday for taking photographs without the required permit. Separately, Mr. Dujarric also said that armed bandits had tried to break into an NGO compound in West Darfur.

As many as 2 million people are displaced within Darfur, a remote and impoverished region in western Sudan that has been beset by brutal fighting between Government forces, allied Janjaweed militias and rebel groups since 2003. An estimated 200,000 others have been killed during that period.

Despite the deteriorating security situation, Mr. Dujarric said a new UN assessment had found that overall malnutrition rates in the region had “mostly stabilized this year,” while food insecurity had also improved slightly due to a stronger international response to the suffering there.

The survey, which sampled households from the 3.7 million people receiving aid out of the total 6 million people in Darfur, was undertaken by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

“Preliminary results… found that 70 per cent of war-affected Darfurians were food insecure, slightly down from 74 per cent last year. While the remaining 30 per cent of this year’s war-affected people required some form of assistance, they had more diverse diets, spent less than 50 per cent of their income on food, and relied less on food aid,” UNICEF said in a joint press release.

“The assessment also found that while the malnutrition rate among children under five rose slightly, from 11.9 per cent last year to 13.1 per cent this year, hovering just beneath the emergency threshold of 15 per cent, they remained significantly below the 2004 malnutrition rates in Darfur, which stood at 21.8 per cent.”

But the UN agencies cautioned that the continued flow of aid is under threat because of escalating violence, which is restricting access to war and drought-affected people, exacerbating the already fragile situation.

Furthermore, the number of families who said they could reach feeding centres for malnourished children had halved as the result of deteriorating security and because some feeding centres closed after malnutrition figures improved last year.

Darfur: Pronk Declared 'Persona Non Grata'

From AFP

The Sudanese military on Friday declared United Nations special envoy Jan Pronk persona non grata, accusing him of "waging war against the armed forces," in the latest escalation in a war of words between Khartoum and the international community.

The general command accused Pronk, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative (SRSG) in Sudan, of "openly intruding in the armed forces' affair".

A statement said it considered the envoy's presence and movements in Sudan "a military threat that adversely affects the performance of the armed forces and he has therefore become a persona non grata".

It complained that the envoy had travelled around Sudan without government permission and dealt with rebel groups fighting the military in the western region of Darfur.

It also accused Pronk of "waging psychological warfare on the armed forces by propagating erroneous information that casts doubts about the capability of the armed forces in maintaining security and defending the country".

On Wednesday, the UN's daily Sudan internet bulletin spoke of mounting tensions between Pronk and the military over his reporting of setbacks for the army in Darfur.

The bulletin said: "On October 17, the Sudan armed forces (SAF) spokesperson strongly criticised SRSG Pronk describing him as "aggressive and lacking credibility."

It added: "This came about following the SRSG's recent statements on SAF suffering heavy losses in Darfur.

"The spokesperson commented that the SAF is currently fighting Chadian troops who use helicopters to support the rebels with munitions. Further he denied the occurrence of mutiny among SAF troops."

Pronk was reported to have said that the army had suffered two defeats and lost hundreds of troops in fighting with rebels in North Darfur.

According to reports, he had also said several generals had been sacked and that the army was being forced to turn to its feared Janjaweed militia allies as troops were refusing to go to the front.

A senior general called for Pronk's swift deportation.

Former armed forces spokesperson general Mohammed Beshir Suleiman said: "The presence of Jan Pronk in the Sudan constitutes a threat to the Sudan's national security and an immediate decision for his deportation from the Sudan should therefore be taken."

Suleiman said the envoy "has gone beyond the boundaries of his responsiblilities and duties", charging that Pronk was abusing his position to attempt to force Sudan to accept a UN security council resolution authorising the despatch of 20 000 UN peacekeepers to Darfur to replace an African Union force.

He said: "The envoy, with this statement, intended to prove that the armed forces and the AU forces have failed in keeping peace and that the national army is incapable of protecting the civilians against rebel attacks, and thus to pave the way for implementation of Resolution 1706."

From the BBC

Sudan's army has called for the UN's special envoy to be thrown out of the country, saying he is "waging war against the armed forces".

A military statement said Jan Pronk's presence in Sudan "negatively affects the work of the armed forces".

Mr Pronk wrote on his personal blog last week that heavy losses in Darfur were eroding Sudanese army morale.

Sudan is resisting strong international pressure to allow UN peacekeepers to try and end the conflict in Darfur.

"The presence of Jan Pronk in the Sudan constitutes a threat to the Sudan's national security and an immediate decision for his deportation from the Sudan should therefore be taken," former armed forces spokesman General Mohammed Beshir Suleiman told the official Suna news agency.

In the statement, the military complained that Mr Pronk had travelled around Sudan without government permission.
It also accused him of "waging psychological warfare on the armed forces by propagating erroneous information that casts doubts about the capability of the armed forces in maintaining security and defending the country".

Mr Pronk's blog posting last week claimed that Sudan's army had suffered two major military defeats in its campaign against rebels in the western region of Darfur.

He wrote that there had been hundreds of casualties and prisoners taken, leading to a fall in morale and the sacking of generals.

He also said that pro-government Arab militias were again being mobilised in contravention of UN resolutions.

Darfur: Blair Urges Push for Ceasefire

From Press Association

Prime Minister Tony Blair is to urge Europe's leaders to step up pressure for a ceasefire to halt the spiralling cycle of violence in Darfur.

He will use an EU summit in Finland to plead for backing from his colleagues to use EU political muscle to exert pressure on Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

"The Lahti summit will remind other EU leaders that the issue of Darfur is out there and that support has to be a given to the United Nations," said a senior Government official.

"And if the question is what can the EU do, it can be part of the international community that looks for a solution."

Mr Blair's call was backed by international aid agencies joining forces to highlight a rising tide of violence in Darfur which is forcing thousands of civilians to take to the hills.

Six agencies - Oxfam, CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), CARE International, Christian Aid, International Rescue Committee and Tearfund - issued a statement warning that the crisis would continue to escalate "unless international bodies such as the EU take on a greater leadership role".

They acknowledged that the EU had been "generous" with funding to help the thousands of displaced victims of the fighting, but urged more political leadership to bring an end to the trouble.

Darfur: Why Are Darfuris Being Expelled from Dubai?

From Joseph Braude in The New Republic

Darfuri native Hasan Najila is hardly a household name among Arab TV viewers, but his condemnation of the genocide being perpetrated by the Sudanese government appears to have made waves. A furniture exporter and ten-year resident of the United Arab Emirates, his career as a public dissident began two years ago as a frequent contributor to the major networks' call-in talk shows--notably the daily audience forum "Minbar Al Jazeera." Within a few months, the Iranian-owned Arabic-language network Alalam took notice and invited him to appear on a live program. Other stations, including Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, followed suit, and, soon, hardly a week would go by without Najila's voice or face popping up on one channel or another. "His Arabic is superb and he makes a compelling case to Arabs and Muslims," says Abu Bakr Al Gadi, an Arab native of Khartoum who lives in Qatar. "Any fair-minded person would be persuaded to oppose the Sudanese government after hearing him out."

Network executives and sympathetic listeners weren't the only ones taking notice of Najila, however. Last February, Khartoum's ambassador to the UAE phoned Najila at home and warned him to end his media appearances--a warning he chose to ignore. "I felt safe to speak out because I lived in Dubai," he explains. A month later, however, Dubai customs agents conducted an intrusive search of Najila's personal effects upon his return from a trip to nearby Kuwait. Then, in April, Dubai's security services interrogated him about possible contributions to Darfuri rebel groups, his professional dealings, and his personal life. "They questioned me six hours per day for five days straight," he recalls. Never charged with any crime, Najila was nonetheless released with clear instructions: pack up and leave the city-state for good. "They ordered me to get out within two weeks and not come back," Najila says. When he moved on to Qatar, he left behind his business, his stock holdings, everything.

Najila isn't the only prominent Darfuri expat to be kicked out of the UAE recently. At least six others have had their residency status revoked in the last two years. All had been known within the Sudanese community as Darfuri opposition figures. And, though it's difficult to prove outright, the strong implication is that the expulsions came at the behest of Khartoum.

Darfur: Genocide Survivors Urge Sanctions

From Reuters

Survivors of genocide, from the Nazi Holocaust to Rwanda, called on Friday for European Union sanctions to stop the Darfur conflict, saying so far the EU has done almost nothing to stop mass killing in western Sudan.

"I didn't survive a Nazi concentration camp to sit back while genocide is repeated," said Holocaust survivor Martin Stern, one of 120 people to sign an open letter to EU states.

"Europe can play a leading role in stopping this slaughter but it has to act now," he added.

Sudan is resisting international pressure to allow 20,000 U.N. troops to replace African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, where 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in a three-year-old conflict.

The underfunded and badly equipped AU mission expires on Dec. 31 but so far there is no agreement on what will happen after that date.

In the meantime, violence in Darfur is worsening with government troops and allied militias, as well as rebels, blamed for new attacks.

Aid workers say their access is severely limited by fighting, and some have warned the humanitarian situation could deteriorate to levels seen in 2003 and 2004 when U.N. officials called Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Survivors from the Nazi Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda signed an open letter to EU states ahead of Friday's summit of leaders in the Finnish town of Lahti, urging EU sanctions on the Sudanese government.

"We write to urge you to act now to end the genocide in Darfur," it said. "Through the European Union you have the capacity to put real pressure on the Sudanese Government to stop the killing. But so far the EU has done next to nothing."

The letter called on the EU to implement a U.N.-authorised no-fly zone over Darfur and to apply concerted pressure on Sudan to stop killing civilians and accept a U.N. force.

It also called for targeted sanctions in the form of asset freezes and travel bans on those responsible for rights abuses and for Brussels to set a date for EU-wide trade sanctions if the Sudanese did not respond to the pressure.

UN: Egeland to Step Down

From DPA

The United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland has announced his intention to step down this year, reports said Friday. "My contract lasts until March next year, but I have notified the UN Secretary General that I will leave my present position before the end of the year," Egeland told Oslo daily Aftenposten.

The 48-year-old Norwegian national has been head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) since September 2003.

Egeland cited the wish to spend more time with his family as the key reason for his decision. His family has lived in Oslo while OCHA headquarters are based in New York. In addition, he has travelled some 200 days a year to conferences and crisis regions.

"My problem is that the best places to work are likely outside Norway while the best place to live in the world is Norway," he said.

Egeland, who was secretary general of the Norwegian Red Cross before joining the UN, also served as secretary of state at the foreign ministry 1990-1997 during Labour Party governments.

Egeland said he could perhaps continue to work for the UN. Both outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his successor, South Korean Ban Ki Moon, have indicated they would like him to do so even if he is based in Norway.

Uganda/Sudan: LRA Deny Killing Civilians

From Reuters

Ugandan rebels denied on Friday killing at least 38 civilians in a string of attacks in southern Sudan and accused Uganda's military of trying to frame them.

South Sudanese officials said unknown gunmen shot dead the victims on Wednesday between the southern capital Juba and the eastern banks of the Nile, where Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas have long had bases -- and terrorised villagers.

Uganda's army blamed the LRA, but the rebels' top commander in the area told Reuters his fighters were blameless.

"No LRA has attacked civilians in southern Sudan," Caesar Acelam said by satellite telephone.

"If attacks took place, it is more likely UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) who are deployed around Juba. They do this, then accuse LRA," he said.

Uganda's army spokesman denied the charge.

"The evidence points to the LRA. The survivors mentioned dreadlocked people. Dreadlocks are not allowed in the UPDF," Major Felix Kulayigye told Reuters. "We did not have forces around Juba town, and we would have no reason to do it."

Southern Sudan's regional government is hosting stop-start peace talks between Uganda and the rebels that began in July.

Under a landmark truce in August, the LRA were supposed to gather at two places in the south, but Uganda's military has accused them of regrouping to resume hostilities instead.

Independent monitors representing different parties at the talks were investigating who was behind Wednesday's killings.

The head of the monitoring team said witnesses told him the attacks had been carried out by shabbily dressed young men and women sporting dreadlocks -- a trademark of the LRA.

Darfur: "60 Minutes"

Last year, Scott Pelly of "60 Minutes" reported on Darfur - this Sunday, "60 Minutes" will be running Pelly's new report [thanks to GI-Net for the tip]

SEARCHING FOR JACOB

It hardly seems possible, but the genocide in Darfur is taking a turn for the worse. The government in Sudan has launched a new offensive, maybe trying to finish what it started three years ago. More than 300,000 people are dead; more than two million are refugees in the Sahara. While looking for a way to explain what's happening in Darfur, "60 Minutes" came upon on the story of a boy named Jacob, whose name was on schoolbooks found in the ashes of his home. The books ended up at a US museum and motivated Scott Pelley to try and find their owner, a boy swept up in the 21st century's first genocide. The remarkable story will be shown on this week's "60 MINUTES."

Sunday, Oct. 22, 7PM ET/PT on CBS

Darfur: Sudan Willing to Discuss Boosting AU Force

From the AP

The Sudanese government, which opposes deploying a U.N. peacekeeping force in the war-ravaged Darfur region, is willing to discuss the world body providing support for the African Union's troubled Darfur peacekeeper force, a senior government official said Thursday.

An ill-equipped and underfunded AU force is struggling to bring peace to Darfur, a vast region of western Sudan where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in three years of fighting.

Khartoum opposes a U.N. Security Council resolution to replace the 7,000-strong AU force with some 20,000 blue helmets, describing it as a neocolonial move.

Instead, the Sudanese government appears to be pushing for a stronger AU force to counter Western accusations it is letting the situation deteriorate in Darfur, where aid groups say the humanitarian crisis is edging toward an all-time worse.

"We are not averse to the idea of discussing what kind of support the AU can receive in terms of troops, material and funding from the U.N." said senior adviser to the president Ghazi Saladdine after meeting with Andrew Natsios, the US special envoy to Sudan.

"Ultimately, we want to have an effective force in Darfur," said Saladdine, one of the hard-liners of the ruling National Congress Party.

Natsios, due to leave Khartoum on Friday, held talks with several high ranking officials during his one-week trip but did not meet with President Omar al-Bashir. He did not give any comment to the media.

Several Western officials, including Jan Pronk, the head of the U.N. mission to Sudan, view a boosted AU mission as one way to overcome the diplomatic deadlock on how to solve the Darfur crisis.

Steps to improve the mission's efficiency have already been taken, and about 150 U.N. military and logistical advisers are due in Darfur in the coming week to reinforce the African force, said Sam Ibok, the AU's chief negotiator for Sudan.

The AU has also planned to send several thousand more troops to the wartorn region, but has been struggling for weeks to fund this move. Chronic lack of cash has left some soldiers without pay since August, while some patrols can not go out because of the lack of fuel.

Ibok said, however, that at least 1,200 new troops from Rwanda and Nigeria would arrive in Darfur by the end of October.

Ibok said the AU would soon solve the problem of its unpaid soldiers, and had received pledges from the Arab League and other international backers for more the US$50 million.

"We currently have enough funds to continue the mission until the end of the year," he said by telephone.

Initially due to finish in September, the AU has been prolonged until the end of the year, and many observers say it should continue beyond that date to avoid a dangerous security vacuum.

Ibok said a possible extension would be discussed during an African Union summit in November and would depend on international support.

"We are taking it one step at a time," said Ibok.

Darfur: Sudan Dismisses US Push for UN Force

From AFP

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir's adviser said Thursday after a meeting with Washington's top envoy that Khartoum continued to reject the deployment of UN peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur.

"Our position has not changed," Ghazi Salaheddin told reporters after meeting Andrew Natsios, who on a mission to Khartoum aimed at winning Sudanese approval for the deployment of UN peacekeepers to replace an African Union force.

"The position to which the government is sticking is that the Darfur peace agreement should be implemented by the African Union (AU)," he added.

[edit]

The newly-appointed Natsios was snubbed by the Sudanese authorities when he arrived in Khartoum last week on his first visit since taking up his post.

Natsios did not talk to the press after his meeting but Salaheddin said that Sudan was willing to consider means of strengthening the cash-strapped AU force.

Darfur: Massive Aid Effort Contains Growth of Malnutrition

From UNICEF

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Darfur, a new United Nations assessment has found that overall malnutrition levels have mostly stabilized in 2006 and food insecurity has improved slightly thanks to a stronger international response to the suffering in Sudan’s war-torn west. Crude mortality dropped for the third year running, but insecurity and lack of access to many Darfurians continued to cloud the aid picture.

The assessment also found that while the malnutrition rate among children under five rose slightly, from 11.9 per cent last year to 13.1 per cent this year, hovering just beneath the emergency threshold of 15 per cent, they remained significantly below the 2004 malnutrition rates in Darfur which stood at 21.8 per cent.

UN humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations have been able to deliver life-saving services including food aid, clean water, health services and agricultural assistance. However, the condition of those in greatest need remains very precarious.

Preliminary results of the joint assessment by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF and the World Food Programme found that 70 per cent of war-affected Darfurians were food insecure, slightly down from 74 per cent last year. While the remaining 30 per cent of this year’s war-affected people required some form of assistance, they had more diverse diets, spent less than 50 per cent of their income on food and relied less on food aid.

But the UN agencies cautioned that the continued flow of aid is under threat because of escalating violence, which is restricting access to war and drought-affected people, exacerbating the already fragile situation.

Approximately 60 per cent of highly food insecure households mentioned insecurity as the main barrier to cultivating their land, raising livestock and taking part in other income-generating activities.

The assessment also showed that the per centage of people with adequate access to food among those living in displacement camps had actually dropped from 36 per cent in 2005 to just 14 per cent in 2006.

Furthermore, the number of families who said they could reach feeding centres for malnourished children had halved as the result of deteriorating security and because some feeding centres closed after malnutrition figures improved last year.

Darfur: Rebels Demand New Talks, Self-Determination

From Reuters

A new Darfur rebel alliance is ready for talks with the government but demands self-determination for the war-torn, arid west of the country, senior rebel leaders said on Thursday.

A May peace accord was signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions and tens of thousands of war victims have rejected it saying it does not give them enough compensation or Darfuris enough political representation.

Following the agreement signed in the Nigerian capital Abuja, non-signatory rebels formed a new alliance called the National Redemption Front (NRF) and renewed hostilities against the government.

"We are ready for talks with the government," said Khalil Ibrahim, a senior member of the NRF. "But we ... will not just accept the Abuja agreement, we want separate talks."

"We now want self-determination, autonomy for Darfur," he added.

Ibrahim said the NRF wanted a similar deal to one reached to end more than two decades of north-south civil war. That agreement gave the south autonomy and the right to a referendum on secession by 2011.

[edit]

Senior NRF leader Bahr Idriss Abu Garda told Reuters from Darfur field commanders were ready to talk but were waiting for the government.

"If the government is ready to make new talks and add the actual demands of the people of Darfur we are ready to sit for talks," he added.

Foreign Minister Lam Akol said the government had not received any official confirmation of a desire for negotiations from the NRF. The government calls the NRF "terrorists".

The government has repeatedly refused to entertain the idea of secession for Darfur. Khartoum and the rebel faction that signed the Abuja deal have both so far refused to accept any changes or additions to the unpopular agreement.

But the top U.N. envoy in Khartoum has said additions are needed to the deal bring all those non-signatories on board and stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

Darfur: Experts Differ on Peacekeeping Needs

From VOA

A peace deal signed in May by the Sudanese government and a Darfur rebel group to end hostilities and grant the region greater political participation and national wealth soon faltered when other rebel groups rejected it, saying it did not go far enough.

Fighting resumed and the African Union mission monitoring the accord has been unable to cope with the situation. While rejecting any handover of peacekeeping in the region to western troops, Khartoum has accepted a compromise that allows U.N. expertise and logistical support in Darfur.

But Middle East Institute scholar Mohammed Khalil says this falls short of what is needed to stem the crisis. "What I think will resolve the problem is sending additional forces to the African mission or new forces under the umbrella of the United Nations because the present situation is very untenable and something needs to be done. And as a mater of fact, even some members of the government say that the situation is so bad that intervention is necessary."

But some observers argue that there is no need for a new peacekeeping force. Using African Union, or A.U., troops is the fastest way to deal with the crisis, says William Church at the London-based Great Lakes Center for Strategic Studies.

"Reinforce the A.U. force already on the ground. They already have a mandate, but the mandate needs to be strengthened. And there are certain issues with their support that need to be reinforced. They need more mobility, more funding, better equipment and things like that," says Church.

[edit]