Darfur: SLA-MM Fires on AU Troops

From Reuters

Gunmen from the former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement opened fire on African Union troops in Darfur following a road accident in which a member of their faction was killed, an African Union statement said on Thursday.

The statement said three AU soldiers were lightly injured by gunfire and 13 AU vehicles seized in the incident on Wednesday on an intercity road in Darfur, where experts say 200,000 people have died since ethnic and political conflict flared in 2003.

The African Union said the gunmen opened fire on the peacekeeping troops -- part of an African force of 7,000 struggling to quell violence in Darfur -- after an SLM vehicle collided with an AU armoured personnel carrier on the road.

The gunmen belonged to a faction of the SLM led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, who signed a 2006 peace deal with the government that has so far failed to stem Darfur bloodshed, the AU said.

In addition to the SLM member who died in the crash, nine other SLM members were injured including four in critical condition who were evacuated by the African Union for medical treatment in Khartoum.

Later, SLM gunmen stopped the vehicle convoy that had been involved in the accident, demanding the AU hand over the armoured personnel carrier and two AU personnel including the driver.

The AU refused their request, and the gunmen opened fire then seized 13 AU vehicles and equipment including arms and ammunition, the African Union said.

It said AU forces did not return fire out of fear that civilians at a nearby market could be harmed. An African Union spokesman said the AU was in contact with the SLM's leadership to resolve the conflict and prevent further violence.

Darfur: Southern Sudan Leader Says New US Sanctions Not the Way to Peace

From the AP

U.S. sanctions imposed on Sudan will do nothing to help bring peace to the Darfur region, and will only hurt people in other parts of the country, Sudanese Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit said Thursday.

U.S. President George W. Bush ordered sanctions Tuesday to spur the African nation's government to halt bloodshed in the Darfur region. More than 200,000 have died in the conflict between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia.

Mayardit, who is president of the southern Sudan region as well as national First Vice President, said his Sudan People's Liberation Army and the Sudan government are working on a solution and that sanctions "will not solve the problems in Darfur."

"There will be an impact on the civilian population because if the sanctions go deep into the economic base, it will affect the people," said Mayardit, in Oslo to meet Norwegian leaders. "Southern Sudan will be hit first because its only income comes from oil."

[edit]

Mayardit said leaders of Darfur groups are supposed to come to southern Sudan in mid-June to discuss peace efforts, and that talks should last about a week.

In Oslo, Mayardit met Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and Aid Minister Erik Solheim. Norway helped mediate the peace accord between the north and south, as Solheim was in Sudan last week to discuss southern Sudan and Darfur with top leaders.

Darfur: Eritrean President Hopes to Unite Rebels

From Reuters

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki met rebel leaders from Sudan's Darfur region on Thursday in the hope of uniting insurgent factions in the restive area, officials said.

Eritrea hopes to play a major role in bringing those Darfur rebels who did not sign a 2006 peace deal to the negotiating table with Khartoum.

Only one Darfur group signed the deal last year and since then, rebels have split into numerous factions.

"The meeting focused on the need for a common platform and a common negotiating team for Darfur. This is just preparatory work for any negotiations," said Yemane Ghebreab, head of political affairs in Eritrea's ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).

Yemane told reporters in the Eritrean capital that delegations from Chad, Libya and southern Sudan's People's Liberation Movement attended the meeting.

Sudan has come under mounting pressure from Western governments and human rights groups over a four-year conflict in its western region that has killed some 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

The United States imposed new unilateral sanctions on Sudan this week and sought support for an international arms embargo out of frustration at Sudan's refusal to end what the United States called genocide.

One Darfur rebel told reporters after the meeting that he supported sanctions against Khartoum.

"The Sudanese government is playing a very bad role ... they are not serious to find a solution to Darfur. We support the (sanctions)," said Mansour Araba, deputy of general security for Sudan's Liberation Army (SLA).

There are at least three SLA factions, but Araba did not say which he belonged to.

Darfur: Denying Genocide - and Americans Their Coca-Cola

From Dana Milbank in the Washington Post [a video version of this piece can be found here]

The Iraq war gave us Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi information minister who, while American troops patrolled nearby streets, held a defiant news conference to proclaim that there were no U.S. forces in the city.

Baghdad Bob, whose real name is Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, earned a place among the ranks of colorful propagandists such as Hanoi Hannah and Tokyo Rose. Now, the genocidal Sudanese government has an entry in this category. Let's call him Khartoum Karl.

Karl -- a.k.a. John Ukec Lueth Ukec, the Sudanese ambassador to Washington -- held a news conference at the National Press Club yesterday to respond to President Bush's new sanctions against his regime. In his hour-long presentation, he described a situation in his land that bore no relation to reality.

Genocide in the Darfur region? "The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide," Ukec shouted, gesticulating wildly and perspiring from his bald crown. "I think this is a pretext."

Ah. So what about the more than 400,000 dead? "See how many people are dying in Darfur: None," he said.

And the 2 million displaced? "I am not a statistician."

Khartoum Karl went on to say that, all evidence to the contrary, his government does not support the murderous Janjaweed militia. "It cannot happen," he said, "so rule it out." As for the Sudanese regime itself: "We are the agents of peace, people like me, my colleagues who are in the central government of Sudan."

What's more, the good and peaceful leaders of Sudan were prepared to retaliate massively: They would cut off shipments of the emulsifier gum arabic, thereby depriving the world of cola.

"I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country," the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola.

A reporter asked if Sudan was threatening to "stop the export of gum arabic and bring down the Western world."

"I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this," Khartoum Karl warned anew, beckoning to the Coke bottle. "But I don't want to go that way."

As diplomatic threats go, that one gets high points for creativity: Try to stop the killings in Darfur, and we'll take away your Coca-Cola.

But then, Ukec is a very creative man. While millions in Darfur go hungry, he suggested that the U.S. sanctions would limit "the sugar the Darfurians need seriously." He explained: "The people of Darfur, they need a lot of sugar and they are used to it."

The gems kept tumbling from his lips. "Sudan is the breadbasket of the world," he boasted, and it is setting up "the best democracy in the world." Further, "we have opened our arms to the rest of the world." All this genocide talk "is just a concocted idea." After all, "Darfur is a very small spot," he argued, and "we are not warmongers."

"We are just telling you the facts," he added.

Khartoum Karl paid about $600 for a small room at the press club and a spread of Coca-Cola products. A dozen reporters, and a similar number of Sudanese Embassy officials, watched the ambassador for an hour as he shouted into the microphone and delivered a circular and rambling complaint about the injustice of U.S. sanctions. His fingers, fists and arms flew through the air, exposing the flashy gold watch on his wrist.

Growing less lucid as the hour progressed, Ukec blamed a Darfur lobby "that has taken control of the Democratic Party," which in turn pressured Bush to take action against Sudan. "The Democrats do not want Bush to go through with the success he has made in Sudan," the ambassador reasoned.

Whenever he found himself in a rhetorical jam, which was frequently, Ukec had an all-purpose answer: Iraq. Justifying the killings in Darfur that he had just denied, he asked: "How many times have we seen on the TV civilians in Iraq have been killed? And they are said to be collateral. Why does it apply to United States and it doesn't apply to the army of Sudan?"

The ambassador's perspiration became more profuse as he answered questions about the killings. "It's Darfurians fighting among themselves," he ventured. "It's just you and your cousin fighting with you."

A reporter asked Ukec how he would describe the situation in Darfur. The ambassador compared it to the American West: "The farmers are being squeezed by the herders, just like you had here in the 18-something, when the cowboys were fighting . . . with the farmers over land for grazing."

Undoubtedly, Khartoum Karl is under a great deal of stress these days, and, toward the end, he revealed the personal nature of his complaint. "You are failing me in particular," he said. "The people of Sudan sent me here because they know I have good relationship with you guys. . . . And I come and I've been slammed with the sanctions."

It was, perhaps, the only honest thing the ambassador said all day. "I am the man with the toughest job in the world," he asserted. With Baghdad Bob out of business, that just may be the truth.

Darfur: Bush's New Sanctions Won't Stop the Genocide

From Eric Reeves in The New Republic

As genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan has ground on, President Bush has felt increasing pressure to respond. His administration declared in September 2004 that genocide was occurring in Darfur and that the Khartoum regime and its Janjaweed militia allies were responsible, but the violence, now in its fifth year, has continued unstaunched. And so, on Tuesday, he imposed a series of sanctions on Khartoum, the most significant of which placed U.S. currency restrictions on 31 Khartoum-controlled or related firms, nearly all in the oil sector.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte asserted that the new sanctions regime "increases the pressure on the government of Sudan to live up to its obligations, which it has not done so far." The blunt truth, however, is that the sanctions have no meaningful bite. Given the comprehensive U.S. trade and economic sanctions originally imposed by President Clinton in November 1997, these small, incremental additions are nothing more than a bookkeeping inconvenience for the Khartoum regime. Crude oil is a highly prized, completely fungible international commodity. The sanctions will simply oblige Khartoum to convert dollar-denominated contracts to euro-denominated or yen-denominated ones (Japan and China both import huge quantities of Sudanese crude). Indeed, China explicitly warned on Tuesday that it will not approve of any sanctions measures, including at the United Nations--something Negroponte indicated the United States would seek. To that, Negroponte admitted, "Well, it is true that the Chinese do not have the absolutely identical position to ours." It's an understatement that amounts to disingenuousness.

And so, rather than punish the regime, the sanctions simply continue the Bush administration's pattern of empty rhetoric and inconsequential actions. Part-time U.S. special envoy for Sudan Andrew Natsios inadvertently confirmed this on Tuesday, when he said at a State Department briefing, "The purpose of these sanctions is not the sanctions [but] to send a message to the Sudanese government to start behaving differently." That is, they are largely symbolic.

It is thoroughly peculiar that the Bush administration somehow thinks that their message has not gotten through to Khartoum. Given the raft of visits by senior U.S. officials, going back to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's July 2004 journey to Khartoum, it's difficult to believe that any important message remains un-conveyed. Start behaving differently was the central point of U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council Resolution 1556, which "demanded" that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed and bring their leaders to justice. The United States has also demanded on many occasions that humanitarian access be unfettered and that Khartoum halt its indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. The message has been delivered clearly; that it has gone unheeded is what is so painfully salient.

But why should Khartoum listen to the United States? China has been the primary supplier of weapons and weapons technology to Khartoum over the past decade and the primary investor in Sudan's Khartoum-dominated economy, particularly its oil sector. And China has offered Khartoum unstinting diplomatic support at the United Nations. With such a benefactor, new sanctions from the United States will have no effect at all.

The poverty of Bush's efforts seems lost on many, who are perhaps wary of seeming to be critical of any action that claims to be pressuring Khartoum's génocidaires. But this marks a deeply confused thinking about this week's developments. If Khartoum's canny security cabal sees that the United States is unprepared to do no more than continue its pattern of bluster and posturing, they will draw the inevitable conclusion: The United States has no more potent leverage to wield.

Darfur: Hundreds Flee to Town in Central African Republic

From the UN News Center

Some 1,500 Sudanese refugees have sought refuge in a single town in the Central African Republic (CAR), claiming that Sudanese Government forces and armed militias attacked their town two weeks ago, a United Nations spokesperson said today.

Several UN agencies have just completed an assessment mission to the town of Sam Ouandja, in northeastern CAR, the spokesperson, Michele Montas, said today in New York.

“The agencies say the number of refugees continues to grow,” Ms. Montas said. “The majority of them are women and children, who have travelled the 200 kilometres between the two towns on foot.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) is providing a one-month initial food ration for the refugees who have already arrived in the town, and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) along with he UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is providing non-food items, Ms. Montas added.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued a news release saying the influx of refugees is ongoing.

“We did not find evidence of the presence of armed elements in the group and the refugees assured the mission that everyone originates from DaFak in Sudan and no Chadian nationals among them,” said Bruno Geddo, Representative of UNHCR.

“We will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure the civilian and humanitarian character of the operation,” he added.

“Considering that the majority of the refugees appear to be women and children, WFP will provide emergency food assistance, while at the same time carry out an assessment of the humanitarian needs of the most vulnerable individuals among the local population in Sam Ouandja,” said that agency’s Representative in CAR, Jean-Charles Dei.

“Beyond the need for humanitarian assistance, the United Nations remains highly concerned about the protection of civilians and calls for the national authorities to continue to facilitate humanitarian access to displaced populations in need,” said Jean-Sébastien Munié, OCHA chief in the country.

UN officials have frequently warned that the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region is threatening to engulf the CAR as well as Chad – a caution Mr. Munié repeated today.

“The arrival of these refugees from Sudan is another evidence of the spill-over effect and the regional dimension of the conflict in Darfur,” he concluded.

Darfur: China Urges Patience, Opposes Sanctions

From Reuters

China urged the international community on Thursday to show patience with Sudan and said new sanctions would only complicate efforts to implement a U.N. peace plan for strife-torn Darfur.

The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Sudan earlier this week and sought support for an international arms embargo out of frustration at Sudan's refusal to end what President George W. Bush called genocide in Darfur.

"New sanctions against Sudan would only complicate the issue," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing. "China appeals to all parties to maintain restraint and patience."

Beijing, which holds veto power on the U.N. Security Council, is a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, sells Khartoum weapons and has invested heavily in its infrastructure.

It also opposes sending U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur, where the United Nations estimates that fighting by government-linked militias and rebel groups has killed 200,000 people and forced 2 million more to flee their homes, without Khartoum's consent.

But Chinese officials reject criticism from human rights groups that its ties with Sudan are abetting the bloodshed. Beijing says it has been engaging the government on Darfur and encouraging it to be more flexible about accepting a U.N. force.

"Relevant parties are making joint efforts to win positive achievements on the Darfur issue," Jiang said.

Sudan has agreed in principle to the "Annan peace plan", which proposes sending in U.N. troops to bolster an African Union peacekeeping force, but has delayed implementing the package.

Uganda: LRA Seek Suspension of Arrest Warrants

From VOA

Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels are seeking a 12-month suspension in the arrest warrants against their leaders issued by the International Criminal Court.

James Obita, the technical advisor to the rebels' negotiating team, tells VOA the rebels will ask for the suspension when peace talks with the Ugandan government resume Thursday in Juba, southern Sudan.

He says in connection with that request, the rebels will propose an "alternative justice system" to deal with war crimes committed during the rebels' 20-year uprising in northern Uganda.

Also from VOA

Another round of peace talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels aimed at ending almost twenty years of the rebels insurgency begins today (Thursday) in the Southern Sudanese capital, Juba. On the eve of the talks, the government Wednesday advocated the use of the traditional clan-based justice systems as an alternative to jail sentences in dealing with rebel war crimes. The ritual involves a murderer facing relatives of the victim and admitting his crime before both drink a bitter brew made from a tree root mixed with sheep's blood. But the LRA rebels insist they would refuse to sign any deal unless the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants against its top leadership are withdrawn.

Major Felix Kulayigye is the spokesman for Uganda’s ministry of defense. From the capital, Kampala he told VOA that the government is responding to the wish of the victims of the rebels.

“The government is responding to the people’s wishes, the people in northern Uganda who have indeed appealed to the government to offer an opportunity to the rebels under the traditional justice mechanism, which not only attends to impunity, but also heals the wounds of the victims,” Kulayigye said.

He said the ICC would only consider lifting the arrest warrants against the rebels’ leadership only if the ongoing peace talks are successfully concluded.

“Once the talks are successful and they accept to subject themselves to the traditional system, the ICC is willing to give that chance. But minus offering themselves to the traditional system, then the ICC would have no conviction that indeed that impunity, justice and accountability would be addressed,” he pointed out.

Kulayigye reiterated the Uganda government has very little influence on the ICC-issued arrest warrants against the rebel leadership.

“Of course you know the ICC warrants indeed are controlled by the ICC, not the government of Uganda. I’m saying that whereas the referral was made by the government of Uganda the powers to withdraw or even suspend the ICC warrants rests with the International Criminals Court itself. The government can only engage the ICC when it has a package that would act as an alternative. Minus that package, there is nothing the government can do. Actually, the ICC wouldn’t understand the government,” Kulayigye noted.

He chided the LRA’s second in command Vincent Otti for saying that the rebels would rather continue fighting if the ICC warrants are not lifted.

“Otti’s statement is actually not in good faith because the issue of the ICC warrants were highly explained by the experts who by the way happened to come from the same place as the indicted. So they explained the spirit, the operation and the workings of the ICC. And indeed the government can only engage the ICC, once there is a package that is convincing enough to prove that impunity would be addressed at the same time the victims would be reconciled with the perpetrators,” Kulayigye said.

DRC: After Weekend Attack, Villagers Afraid to Return Home

From the AP

Three Congolese villages have been abandoned, their inhabitants sheltering at a nearby church, hospital and with friends, since a weekend attack blamed on Rwandan rebels wielding machetes, sticks and hammers, the United Nations said.

In statements Wednesday, the U.N. also revised the confirmed death toll from the attack late Sunday, saying 19 villagers, including women and children, had been killed. Earlier, U.N. officials had said 17 villagers were killed in their sleep, and another 12 corpses were found in the forest, but they said Wednesday the number of bodies in the forest had not yet been confirmed.

Days after the attack, survivors were refusing to return to the villages, Kemal Saiki, a U.N. spokesman in Congo, said Wednesday. He said they feared there were too few government soldiers in the region to protect them, and were sheltering in a church and hospital in the area and in the homes of relatives and friends.

He added 19 people injured in the attack, most of them children, were being cared for in the overstrained hospital.

"Because of a lack of medicine, caring for the injured poses a serious problem," Saiki said. "There's a marked shortage of beds and some of the injured are sharing beds."

He added a U.N. team sent to investigate the killings and what could be done to respond had had trouble Tuesday because of an angry protest by villagers .

"Of course the people want to express their discontent," Saiki said. "But even though this kind of reaction is understandable, it's regrettable that the mission was unable to complete its work."

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "condemns these attacks in the strongest possible terms," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters, adding Ban called upon Congo's government to bring those responsible to justice.

"This latest atrocity underscores once again the need to resolve the problem of armed Congolese and foreign militia operating in (Congo), and for the government ... and the international community to work together in creating professional security forces capable of defending the security and human rights of the people of the DRC," Montas said.

International Justice: High Stakes for Africa at Trial of Warlord Taylor

From Reuters

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor goes on trial next week charged with instigating murder, rape and terrorism during Sierra Leone's civil war in a case prosecutors say could end impunity for African strongmen.

Taylor, once one of Africa's most feared warlords, faces 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, including recruiting child soldiers during the 1991-2002 conflict.

The 59-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

He was a driving force behind intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone which killed more than a quarter of a million people and shocked the world with stories and images of child soldiers high on drugs, killing, raping and looting.

"Charles Taylor caused the biggest atrocities in this war. I support the trial because then other people will fear to do the same," said Freetown trader Mohamed Kolokah, 28, whose business partner was killed by rebels supported by Taylor.

The trial starts in The Hague on Monday. Prosecutors state in the indictment that Taylor sought to gain control of Sierra Leone's mineral wealth, particularly its diamond mines, and destabilise the Freetown government, to boost his own influence throughout West Africa.

In Sierra Leone, a generation of amputees -- civilians whose hands or legs were hacked off by rebels -- serve as a reminder of the cruelty of the conflict.

"This trial is a crucial moment in signalling a break from the past in which impunity has all too often prevailed," said Elise Keppler of campaign group Human Rights Watch.

"Taylor's trial sends a signal that no-one is above the law when it comes to the most serious crimes ... the stakes are very high. This puts would-be perpetrators on the alert."

In the past, ousted African dictators have often fled overseas to live out their days unpunished. Taylor found exile in Nigeria after being overthrown in 2003, but was later handed to the court under international pressure.

The court indicted Taylor in March 2003 on 17 counts of war crimes but condensed the charges for a more focused trial, hoping to avoid the disappointment felt after former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died just months before a verdict was due in a trial which lasted more than four years.

The court's prosecutor, Stephen Rapp, has said he expects Taylor's trial to be concluded in about 18 months. The defence is expected to present its case by early next year.

Britain has said it will jail Taylor, who faces a hefty sentence, if he is convicted.

Taylor was moved to The Hague because of fears a trial in Freetown could spur unrest in Sierra Leone or Liberia. The trial is held in the premises of the International Criminal Court.

"Everybody knows that Charles Taylor could make trouble again in Sierra Leone and it would be dangerous to try him here," said Kolokah in Freetown.

The prosecution plans to present evidence from 139 key witnesses, both victims of attacks and insiders.

The indictment, which concentrates on abuses between 1996 and 2002, catalogues the horrific practices of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels. Taylor is accused of backing them.

"Civilians were shot, burned in their homes, hacked to death, and killed either while trying to escape from attacks on their homes or from their captors. Some victims died as a result of the sexual or physical violence to which they were subjected, while others died in the performance of forced labour."

"From the beginning of and throughout the conflict in Sierra Leone, the accused provided the RUF with assistance, encouragement and direction," the indictment states.

Darfur: Paving the Road to Hell

A post from Eric Reeves on Comment is Free

There has been a strangely uncritical response to President Bush's announcement that he is imposing additional sanctions on Khartoum for failing to halt the grim genocide by attrition in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Indeed, it would seem that - given the inertia in Europe, the cynicism of the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conference, and the callously rapacious attitude of China - anything is better than nothing. But such a view reflects a dangerous failure to understand how these weak and finally meaningless efforts actually encourage Khartoum in its belief that it can sustain the immensely destructive status quo in Darfur.

The conflict in Darfur has now entered its fifth year and is certainly different in character from the massive, ethnically targeted human destruction of 2003-2004, in which the vast majority of non-Arab or African villages were burned and plundered. This destruction has displaced some 2.5 million people, most into squalid camps that have become cauldrons of suffering, rage and despair. The rebel movement that emerged in early 2003 has fractured; the Arab populations that had sought to stay out of the conflict have been remorselessly drawn in; and, terrifyingly, insecurity may force the exit of aid organisations now providing a critical lifeline for what the UN estimates are a staggering 4.5 million conflict-affected human beings in the greater humanitarian theatre of Darfur and eastern Chad.

There is little dispute that both civilians and humanitarian workers need a much more robust force than the current weak and demoralised African Union mission to protect them - in the camps, in rural areas, along transport corridors, and during the first tentative efforts by refugees to return to the sites of their former villages and resume agriculturally productive lives.

But President Bush's new sanctions do nothing to bring about that change. Beyond seeking to impose financial punishment on two mid-level regime officials and a rebel leader, they would deny 31 Sudanese companies access to international contracts for American dollars. This is little more than a bookkeeping inconvenience: a valuable, fungible international commodity such as crude oil - by far Sudan's largest export - will always find a buyer, whether the contract is denominated in Euros, Yen (Japan buys huge quantities of Sudanese crude) or Chinese Yuan.

Do the new sanctions offer any hope of pushing Khartoum to accept the required international protection force, of the sort authorised nine months ago by UN Security Council Resolution 1706? Do US currency sanctions on the 31 companies bring to bear any real pressure on Khartoum's génocidaires, the senior officials responsible for loosing the Janjaweed militia and its deadly military aircraft on thousands of defenceless African villages?

Not in the slightest. On the contrary, by working so hard to suggest that this small step will make such a significant difference (Bush spoke unctuously early Tuesday morning, knowing that his comments would dominate the international news of the day in the US), the Bush administration has let Khartoum know that is unwilling to take more serious steps. America's weaknesses appear all the more glaring in the ghastly wake of Iraq, and Europe is less than eager for another international adventure. It hardly helps that Bush's only rival for posturing on Darfur is the soon-to-be-unemployed Tony Blair.

Even the Bush administration's incongruously part-time special envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, signaled that nothing of substance had been proposed. The Guardian reports that Natsios thinks "the sanctions were intended to be largely symbolic" and says, "The purpose of these sanctions is not the sanctions [but] to send a message to the Sudanese government to start behaving differently." Send Khartoum a message? One might have thought that more than half a dozen UN Security Council resolutions would have sent the necessary "message" - in particular, Resolution 1556 (July 2004), which "demanded" that the Islamist regime disarm the Janjaweed and bring its leaders to justice.

No, the problem is not communicating with Khartoum; rather, it's convincing these brutal men that there will be consequences for failing to heed such messages. To date there have been no penalties for genocidal counterinsurgency warfare; no penalties for ongoing indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilian targets; no penalties for harassing, abusing and assaulting humanitarian workers and impeding delivery of aid supplies. And the Janjaweed continue their savage predations, often after having been recycled into the paramilitary guises of the "Border Intelligence", or "Popular Defense Forces", or local police, even within the camps.

The key is to internationalise sanctions and, even more critically, expend the diplomatic capital necessary to make oil-guzzling China to see that it must cooperate in halting human suffering and destruction in Darfur and eastern Chad. To date, China shows no signs of cooperating in serious fashion, although the rapidly increasing opprobrium attached to their hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games may soon change this. In this key effort, Bush's sanctions stunt adds nothing.

Darfur: U.S. Demand For New U.N. Sanctions Faces Uphill Struggle

From the AP

The U.S. demand for new U.N. sanctions against Sudan faces an uphill struggle, not least because Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he wants more time for diplomacy to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur.

Ban urged the United States and Britain on April 2 to delay a push for tougher sanctions _ and he indicated that he remains opposed not only to President George W. Bush's call for U.N. sanctions but to new U.S. economic measures that Bush ordered Tuesday.

The strong desire among many Security Council members to support the secretary-general coupled with the opposition of some members to sanctions in general _ including China which has strong commercial ties with Sudan _ signals a difficult road ahead for the United States and its key supporter Britain.

While Bush said new sanctions are necessary to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, the U.S. push comes at a delicate time in negotiations on a 23,000-strong U.N.-African Union "hybrid" force for Darfur and efforts by special envoys for both organizations to get all combatants to the negotiating table to try to reach a political settlement.

The United States and Britain said sanctions can pressure the Sudanese government to agree to the "hybrid" force and to improve the humanitarian and security situation, but Russia, China and South Africa questioned why Washington and London were pressing for sanctions when Khartoum had taken some positive steps.

Ban, who has made resolving the Darfur conflict a top priority, told reporters "we will have to wait to see" whether the new U.S. sanctions make his efforts to get Sudanese government agreement for the "hybrid" force more difficult.

"I am very much committed to work as fast as I can to bring a comprehensive resolution in the political process, peacekeeping operations and humanitarian matters," Ban told reporters after Bush's announcement on Tuesday. "I need some more time."

In order to help bring peace and security to Darfur, the secretary-general urged the international community to work "in a mutually reinforcing way" and the Sudanese government and rebel groups to seek a peace agreement as soon as possible.

[edit]

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin appeared surprised at the timing of the new push for U.N. sanctions.

"There have been some positive developments, so this kind of a thing to my mind would be something of a departure from the current common strategy of the secretary-general and the Security Council," Churkin said.

As the buyer of two-thirds of Sudan's oil and a major investor in its economy, China faces growing criticism for not doing enough to pressure Khartoum to end the violence in Darfur. Some critics have called for a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Li Junhua, a senior Chinese diplomat, rejected any link between the Olympics and Darfur, and stressed that China is always cautious about sanctions.

"We never, ever believe that sanctions would contribute a lot to move the situation, no matter in Sudan or in other cases," he said. "We tend to believe right now more coordinated and collective efforts should be done to convince and persuade our colleagues in Khartoum to move forward to implement the three-phase approach."

Nonetheless, Khalilzad and Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry are moving ahead on drafting a new sanctions resolution.

"We won't introduce it for a few days yet," Jones Parry said Tuesday.

The resolution will add more names to a list of government and rebel figures subject to an asset freeze and travel ban for obstructing peace efforts or violating human rights, it will expand an embargo on arms sales to Sudan, and order the monitoring of Sudanese government flights over Darfur, he said.

The Security Council is planning to visit Khartoum on June 17 as part of an African mission and Li said he does not expect any action on sanctions before then.

He said he expects council members to discuss deploying the hybrid force and ways to expedite the political process with Sudanese leaders _ which are "the top priority" for the council.

Whether new U.N. sanctions would have an impact on Khartoum, and whether China would abide by them, remains to be seen.

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo questioned the aim of sanctions.

"We have to have a plan. So after we apply the sanctions, what happens then?" he said. "Right now the surprising thing was that we were thinking that the government of Sudan was now beginning to take the right actions, and agree to what we are going to do."

Britain's Jones Parry said he believes "the threat of sanctions has had an effect" _ but "at the moment there's no sign that it's had quite enough effect."

Part of the strategy of new sanctions, he said, is to try to concentrate "the minds in Khartoum and among the rebels to get them actually to do what they need to do."

Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, agreed that Khartoum must do more _ stop attacks, dismantle the janjaweed militias, allow unimpeded humanitarian access, and agree quickly to the hybrid force.

Would the U.S. support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics?

"We will see in terms of Chinese actions in the council with regard to Sudan," Khalilzad said.

Darfur: Sudan's Ambassador Says New U.S. Sanctions Could Lead to Instability

From the AP

Sudan's ambassador to Washington said Wednesday that sanctions ordered by U.S. President George W. Bush threaten to unravel peace agreements and break his country apart.

Ambassador John Ukec Lueth Ukec said the sanctions would end up hurting ordinary people rather than government officials.

Bush ordered the sanctions Tuesday to pressure President Omar al-Bashir's government to stop aggravating the violence in Sudan's vast Darfur region on the Chad border. The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan's oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the Darfur bloodshed.

Ukec contended in a news conference that the sanctions would affect the supply and distribution of basic necessities and lead to more suffering.

"I don't think that the government officials — hundreds of them — will stop getting tea and sugar," he said. "It is just a death sentence to a large number of people."

He said that sanctions will hamper negotiations under way for peace in Darfur and other conflict regions in Sudan and could harm the stability of the country.

"Although the policy of the United States is to keep Sudan as one country, what it is doing is disintegrating Sudan," Ukec said.

Genocide: Sudanese Advocate and Scholar Named to UN Prevention Post

From the UN News Center

The director of Sudan efforts at the United States Institute for Peace and a scholar associated with several universities has been named by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as his new Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities.

Francis Deng also served as the Secretary-General’s Representative on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from 1992 to 2004, after holding a range of positions in the UN and the Sudanese Government.

Mr. Deng succeeds Juan Méndez of Argentina, the first Special Adviser on genocide prevention who was appointed in July 2004 with a mandate to collect existing information on serious violations of human rights that could lead to genocide and to bring potential genocidal situations to the attention of the UN Security Council.

Among his activities, Mr. Méndez has made repeated visits to Darfur, resulting in varied recommendations to the Secretary-General and to the Security Council about what needs to be done in the strife-torn region of Sudan.

On the 12-year commemoration of the Rwanda genocide, Mr. Méndez wrote an op-ed published by several European and Asian newspapers in which he stressed that despite international obligations – such as the 1948 Genocide Convention – the global response against genocide continues to fall short of what is required.

In May 2006, Secretary-General Kofi Annan established a prominent group of experts – including Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu and the former United Nations Force Commander in Rwanda Romeo Dallaire – to support the Special Adviser and contribute to the broader efforts of the UN to prevent such massive crimes against humanity.

According to today’s announcement, Mr. Ban has asked Mr. Deng to devote himself full time to the genocide advisory post, and is looking for additional ways to strengthen the office.

Darfur: Ad Campaign Seeks to Shame China

From the AP

A new ad campaign attempts to draw a contrast between China's high profile role as host of the 2008 Olympics and the more controversial hand it has played in backing Sudan, scene of a four-year old humanitarian catastrophe.

The campaign is being sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition, which has been trying to raise public consciousness about the hundreds of thousands of Darfuris who have died and the 2.5 million who are reduced to living in wretched camps for the displaced.

The Bush administration has classified the suffering in Darfur as genocide.

One picture in the ad shows a hand preparing to shoot a pistol signaling the start of a dash by sprinters for Olympic gold. Above the picture are the words: "Beijing Games."

A second picture shows an African man, presumably a Sudanese, hoisting a semi-automatic assault weapon, apparently with hostile intent. The accompanying words: "Darfur Genocide."

A coalition spokesman, M. Allyn Brooks-LaSure, said the ads are expected to used up entire pages in a number of U.S. newspapers on Wednesday and Thursday. He was unable to provide the per-newspaper costs of the ads.

A coalition press release called China "Sudan's chief diplomatic sponsor, major weapons provider, and largest foreign investor and trade partner."

But Jan Eliasson, special U.N. envoy for Darfur, said two weeks ago that China distanced itself somewhat from Darfur, perhaps to ease criticism of its policies as the Beijing Olympics approach.

China, he said, "does not want to be seen stopping progress in Darfur."

Darfur: US Briefs China on Move to Sanction

From AP

The U.S. briefed China on Wednesday about the administration's plans to introduce a new U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Sudan's government for failing to do enough to halt the bloodshed in Darfur.

The sanctions resolution is expected to face a tough time in the council, in part because of long-standing opposition from China, a veto-wielding council member.

"I wanted to be very clear about what our position is and the Chinese were equal to the task of explaining how they see the situation," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. "I think we are united by a desire to resolve the matter."

The U.S., which has condemned the crisis in Darfur as genocide, has long pushed for a tougher stance against Sudan's government while China has consistently opposed attempts to pressure Khartoum, saying the issue should be resolved through diplomatic negotiations.

Hill refused to talk about the gap in their positions and gave few additional details about his conversation with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. He said he expressed support for China's decision to send engineers to Darfur to support a small force of U.N. peacekeepers that Sudan has agreed to.

U.S. President George W. Bush ordered new economic sanctions Tuesday to pressure Sudan's government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur. He also directed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed U.N. resolution to strengthen international pressure on the Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir.

The biggest buyer of Sudanese oil and a major investor in Sudan's economy, China faces growing criticism for not doing enough to pressure Khartoum to end the violence in Darfur.

Hill, who was in China on a one-day stopover, said he and Wu also talked about ways to restart stalled international talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programs, climate change and bilateral relations.

Darfur: UN Secretary-General Appeals for More Time

From the AP

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed for more time for diplomacy to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur as the United States and Britain announced plans for a resolution that would impose new U.N. sanctions on Sudan.

Ban had urged the U.S. and Britain on April 2 to delay a push for tougher sanctions — and he indicated that he remains opposed not only to U.S. President George W. Bush's call for tougher U.N. sanctions but to new U.S. economic sanctions Bush ordered Tuesday.

While Bush said new sanctions are necessary to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, the U.S. push comes at a delicate time in negotiations for a 23,000-strong U.N.-African Union "hybrid" force for Darfur and efforts by special envoys for both organizations to get all combatants to the negotiating table to try to reach a political settlement.

The United States and Britain said sanctions can pressure the Sudanese government to agree to the "hybrid" force and to improve the humanitarian and security situation, but Russia, China and South Africa questioned why Washington and London were pressing for sanctions when Khartoum had taken some positive steps.

Ban told reporters on Tuesday: "We will have to wait to see" whether the new U.S. sanctions make his efforts to get the Sudanese government's agreement for the "hybrid" force more difficult.

"I am very much committed to work as fast as I can to bring a comprehensive resolution in the political process, peacekeeping operations and humanitarian matters," Ban told reporters.

"I hope that the international community can work in a mutually reinforcing way to bring peace and security in Darfur," he said. "At the same time, I hope that the government of Sudan, and also the rebel movement — they should take concrete action reflecting the wishes of the international community to seek peace and security as soon as possible."

Did he want more time for negotiations? "Yes, I need some more time," Ban said.

Asked whether he appealed to Bush or U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in recent days not to go ahead with sanctions, the secretary-general said: "You may (imagine) what I have been doing."

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the United States supports Ban's "three-legged approach" — peacekeeping, political and humanitarian. But "there is a need, given the record of the government in Sudan, for continued pressure at the same time as engagement on the three tracks," he said.

"We will move forward on a resolution," he said.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said the two countries were still working on the text of a sanctions resolution "so we won't introduce it for a few days yet."

Jones Parry said London and Washington had given the secretary-general and his special adviser, Jan Eliasson, "negotiating space" but had not seen progress on the three tracks.

"I think the threat of sanctions has had an effect," he said. "At the moment there's no sign that it's had quite enough effect."

Jones Parry said part of the strategy of new sanctions is to try to concentrate "the minds in Khartoum and among the rebels to get them actually to do what they need to do."

[edit]

Eliasson also reported some progress on the political front.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin appeared surprised at the timing of a new sanctions resolution.

"There have been some positive developments, so this kind of a thing to my mind would be something of a departure from the current common strategy of the secretary-general and the Security Council," Churkin said.

Li Junhua, a senior Chinese diplomat, said China is always cautious about sanctions.

"We never, ever believe that sanctions would contribute a lot to move the situation, no matter in Sudan or in other cases," he said. "We tend to believe right now more coordinated and collective efforts should be done to convince and persuade our colleagues in Khartoum to move forward to implement the three-phase approach."

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo questioned the aim of sanctions.

"We have to have a plan. So after we apply the sanctions, what happens then?" he said. "Right now the surprising thing was that we were thinking that the government of Sudan was now beginning to take the right actions, and agree to what we are going to do."

But Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, said Khartoum must do more — stop attacks, dismantle the pro-government janjaweed militias, allow unimpeded humanitarian access, and agree quickly to the hybrid force.

Darfur: Critics Say Bush Handling Falls Short

From the AP

It has taken President George W. Bush nearly three years to match his impassioned rhetoric about what he decries as genocide in Darfur with tougher U.S. action against some of those blamed for the suffering.

When Bush announced sanctions on Tuesday, advocacy groups and lawmakers wished the president had been harsher and wondered whether it was a case of too little, too late for Darfur. The violence has killed 200,000 people and forced 2.5 million more from their homes since it began in February 2003.

The sanctions target three people with suspected links to the violence as well as about 30 companies in Sudan.

"Three people? After four years? And not one of them the real ringleader of the policy to divide and destroy Darfur?" asked John Prendergast, policy adviser to ENOUGH Project, an advocacy group to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. "This will not build multilateral pressure, and this will not end the crisis in Darfur."

Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also faulted Bush. "They could have sent a stronger message months ago and saved many lives from being disrupted or lost," he said.

It is not as if the Bush administration has been unaware of the bloodshed in Darfur,

The United States has been working on the issue at the U.N. Security Council and Bush has appointed special envoys to the region. The U.S. is the world's largest single donor to the people of Darfur, providing more than $1.7 billion (€1.26 billion) in humanitarian and peacekeeping assistance. Still, the administration's steps have not been sufficient to halt the violence in Darfur, an arid region in eastern Africa about the size of Texas.

The conflict erupted when members of Darfur's ethnic African tribes rebelled against what they considered decades of neglect by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. Sudanese leaders are accused of retaliating by unleashing the janjaweed militia to put down the rebels using a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and plunder — a charge they deny.

"The Bush administration has acted more vigorously than perhaps any other nation, but has seriously underestimated what it will take to end the genocide," said David Rubenstein, director of Save Darfur Coalition. "These steps should have been taken earlier, and should have been stronger."

Bush's sanctions, focused on financial transactions, are not overly ambitious. Bush also directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a U.N. resolution aimed at placing multinational pressure on Khartoum.

"The president is right to expand U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese government and propose new steps at the United Nations, but it's not enough," said Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has advocated committing U.S. troops to Darfur.

[edit]

It's unclear whether the new U.S. sanctions will help or hinder efforts to pass a U.N. resolution.

When the U.S. and Britain threatened sanctions against Sudan in mid-April, three Security Council members — China, Russia and South Africa — said it was the wrong time.

The time's up for Sudan's hardline President Omar al-Bashir, said Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

"President Bashir has failed on all counts," Negroponte said, reeling off a list of unfulfilled commitments by the government, including ongoing support for the janjaweed, air raids and ground attacks and the obstruction of relief supplies.

"The Bashir government must see that its actions will choke off international investments that are very important to Sudan," he said. "There is no good argument for giving the Sudanese more time."

The Bush administration has said this before.

After signing an accord to end a long-running civil war in Sudan's south in January 2005, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the atrocities in Darfur must end immediately "not next month ... but right away, starting today."

Darfur: Sudan Shrugs Off US Sanctions

From AFPs

Sudanese officials and analysts on Wednesday dismissed new US sanctions over what Washington termed Khartoum's genocide in Darfur as being a largely political exercise rather than harsh economic curbs.

While one official said economic sanctions could hurt in the long term, but that his country was counting on its "friends" to avert this, notably China, which takes 60 percent of its oil exports.

"I am sure that the companies targeted (by Washington) have long put alternatives in place" to minimise this kind of sanction, said Mohammed Mahjub Harun, a member of Sudan's institute of strategic studies.

He and other analysts questioned by AFP saw the sanctions announced on Tuesday by US President George W. Bush as a means of pressing Khartoum into accepting an international peacekeeping force for Sudan's western region of Darfur.

The United Nations says 200,000 people have been killed there and two million made homeless since rebellion broke out four years ago. That drew a harsh crackdown by Sudan's army and its feared Arab Janjaweed militia allies, which has been blamed for widespread murder, rape and burning of villages.

Sudan disputes those estimates, saying 9,000 people have died.

"This is only a reinforcement of sanctions that have existed for 10 years and have not prevented the Sudanese economy from developing thanks to close links formed with Asia," said Harun.

The stricter sanctions will bar another 31 companies, including oil exporters, from US trade and financial dealings, and take aim at two top Sudanese government officials, the Treasury Department said.

Bush said he had directed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a new UN resolution to broaden economic sanctions on Sudan's leaders, expand an arms embargo on Sudan and bar Sudanese military flights over Darfur.

China, is not only a major customer for Sudanese oil but also supplies arms to the country, opposed the latest sanctions.

Liu Guijin, Beijing's special representative on Darfur, said the sanctions would "only make achieving a solution more complicated," but stopped short of saying China would use its veto power to block a new UN resolution.

Hassen Mekki, a political science lecturer, pointed out that the latest sanctions exclude some Sudanese companies that trade with the United States, such as those which produce Arabic gum used in making the soda drinks manufactured by giant American companies.

Harun said the impact of the sanctions in general could be gauged by the fact that "there has not been a single street demonstration."

But Ahmed Sharif Osman, another analyst, said the sanctions would have an impact, albeit limited. "This impact will be measured in the volume of financial transactions going through the American system."

US official say the goal of the sanctions is to force Sudan to allow the full deployment of a UN peacekeeping force, disarm the Janjaweed militias blamed for much of the carnage, and let humanitarian aid reach the region.

In Khartoum, presidential adviser Mazjub al-Khalifa told reporters the decision "highlights the hostile intentions and points to the fact that the United States does not want peace in Darfur."

Sudan's UN envoy Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohammad called Bush's moves "very regrettable" coming just when he said Khartoum was cooperating with the United Nations on joint peacekeeping with the African Union in Darfur. The world body is seeking a combined force of some 20,000 peace-keepers.

Harun said Washington was trying to push European countries into following its lead and could well succeed "because in all cases, the countries of Europe have few trade links with Sudan."

"But it is unlikely that China will do the same (as Washington)," he added.

From Reuters

Fresh U.S. economic sanctions on Sudan will have minimal impact in Khartoum because it has no direct trade ties with the United States, a senior Sudanese Finance Ministry official said on Wednesday.

U.S. President George W. Bush imposed new unilateral sanctions on Sudan on Tuesday and sought support for an international arms embargo out of frustration at Sudan's refusal to end what he called a genocide in war-ravaged Darfur.

"It doesn't have that much effect on the economy. We don't have direct economic or trade relations with the United States," the Finance Ministry official told Reuters, asking not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

"Our economy is shifting from the USA and Europe to the East. We have almost 70 percent of our foreign trade with the East," he said, adding that the government conducts most of its financial transactions in euros.

Despite sanctions that have blocked much Western investment, Sudan's economy has benefited from Chinese and Asian funds with an expected growth rate of up to 13 percent this year. China buys much of Sudan's 330,000 barrels per day of crude, sells Khartoum weapons and invests heavily in construction projects.

Accusing the Sudanese government of obstructing U.N. efforts to bring peace to Darfur, Bush announced new sanctions that would bar 31 companies controlled by Sudan from doing business in the U.S. financial system.

The companies targeted include firms in Sudan's booming oil business and one accused of transporting weapons to government and militia forces in Darfur. Bush also imposed fiscal sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in Darfur violence.

Analysts said they saw the sanctions as more a political statement than a measure likely to push Khartoum to act against perpetrators of violence in Darfur, where the United Nations says 200,000 people have died since conflict flared in 2003.

Sudan is already an almost entirely cash economy, even for very large transactions. Credit cards are not accepted even at the country's most expensive hotels and shops.

"The sanctions are more a political statement of U.S. displeasure. ... It is a tool the U.S. has used in many places in the world," said Alex Vines, Africa analyst at Chatham House in London.

"In the short-term, the Sudanese are going to be very frustrated. They may dig their heels in," he said, adding that might translate into a slowdown in talks for a "hybrid" Darfur peacekeeping force, although Sudan may ultimately still agree.

Darfur: Bush Announces New Sanctions

From the AP - POTP has links to many more articles here

President George W. Bush ordered new U.S. economic sanctions to pressure Sudan's government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur that the administration has condemned as genocide.

"I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world," the president said Tuesday.

The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan's oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the violence in Darfur.

"For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians," the president said. "My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide.

"The world has a responsibility to put an end to it," Bush said.

[edit]

Beyond the new U.S. sanctions, Bush directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to draft a proposed U.N. resolution to strengthen international pressure on the Sudanese government of President Omar al-Bashir.

Save Darfur Coalition director David Rubenstein welcomed the sanctions, but said they might be too little, too late.

"President Bush must not give further months to determine whether these outlines measures work — the Darfuri people don't have that much time," he said. "The president must set a short and firm deadline for fundamental changes in Sudanese behavior, and prepare now to implement immediately further measures should Khartoum continue to stonewall."

Bush said he delayed imposing sanctions last month to allow more time for diplomacy, but that al-Bashir has continued to make empty promises of cooperation while obstructing international efforts to end the crisis.

"One day after I spoke, they bombed a meeting of rebel commanders designed to discuss a possible peace deal with the government.," the president said. "In the following weeks he used his army and government-sponsored militias to attack rebels and civilians in south Darfur. He's taken no steps to disarm these militias in the year since the Darfur peace agreement was signed. Senior officials continue to oppose the deployment of the U.N. peacekeeping force.

"The result is that the dire security situation on the ground in Darfur has not changed," Bush said.

The conflict erupted in February 2003 when members of Darfur's ethnic African tribes rebelled against what they considered decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. Sudanese leaders are accused of retaliating by unleashing the janjaweed militia to put down the rebels using a campaign of murder, rape, mutilation and plunder — a charge they deny. The fighting in Darfur has displaced 2.5 million people.

Al-Bashir agreed in November to a three-phase U.N. plan to strengthen the overstretched, 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur.

After five months of stalling, the Sudanese president gave the go-ahead in April for the second phase — a "heavy support package" with 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with six attack helicopters and other equipment.

Over the weekend, however, al-Bashir reiterated his opposition to the deployment of a 22,000-strong joint U.N.-AU force, saying he would only allow a larger African force with technical and logistical support from the United Nations.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations has already drafted a resolution and plans to start discussing it with allies on Tuesday, a Security Council diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

But a U.S.-backed sanctions resolution is expected to face a tough time in the council, not only because of longstanding opposition from China which has strong commercial ties with Sudan but because of the timing.

The new sanctions target 31 companies to be barred from the U.S. banking system. Thirty of the companies are controlled by the government of Sudan; the other one is suspected of shipping arms to Darfur, the officials said.

Nearly 10 years ago, the United States cut off about 130 Sudanese companies from the U.S. system over a different dispute, forcing them to find ways to do business outside the sanctions framework.

The U.S. also is targeting three individuals, cutting them off from the U.S. financial system to prevent them, too, from doing business with U.S. companies or individuals.

The Treasury Department said that Ahmad Muhammed Harun, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs, has been accused of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Sudan's head of military intelligence and security, Awad Ibn Auf, was also designated, along with Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group that has refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement.

The U.N. resolution Bush is seeking would apply new international sanctions against the Sudanese government in Khartoum. It also would seek to impose an expanded embargo on arms sales to Sudan, prohibit Sudan's government from conducting offensive military flights over Darfur and strengthen the U.S. ability to monitor and report any violations.

Uganda: Inside An LRA Camp in Congo

From the Daily Monitor

"I want to go to school and learn things about the world," says 16-year-old self styled Sergeant Anyor who would like to ride in a car and remembers he has a sister, Lucy at home in Gulu, northern Uganda.

He has been with the Lords Resistance Army since he was eight years old. Anyor has very little to say about his childhood in the bush; but insists he joined voluntarily 'to fight for my motherland, against all the bad things Museveni is doing'.

He keeps glancing over his shoulder as he talks about how many people he has shot, and is vague about his daily duties - washing clothes for his commanders, gathering mangoes, and hunting forest birds with a sling shot.

Anyor asks for a small bar of soap to take as a present for the wife of his friend with whom he shares a compound in a camp in a thick belt of trees in the Congo. "I am not allowed a wife until I am 18," he explains.

Another young LRA soldier, with the characteristic short beaded dreads and brown gum boots, says he was abducted from a bus station in Nairobi, Kenya.
The young boys are overcome by curiosity but accept nothing from outsiders without permission from the commanders.

Packets of chewing gum slide into a back pocket. Cigarettes are strictly forbidden. Alcohol is evil. Conversation is careful. But at heart they are teenagers - they want to know about cars, girls, clothes and the world beyond their reach.

Being a soldier is a main point of reference: what makes a good soldier or a bad soldier; what is allowed, what is not; who is strong, who is not. These children and young adults, with weapons oddly disproportionate to their youthful bodies, have become completely absorbed into the LRA system. Unlike former abductees who have horrific tales of escape and fear, or children who have been murdered and tortured in the bush, these are the kids who will kill for the mystical, militarised cult.

During the talks in April, about 100 such LRA soldiers made themselves at home on the outskirts of the mediation site in Ri-Kwangba, on the undemarcated Sudan-Congo border. It became a teenager’s hangout; an interface to the outside world. The clearing - only a few hundred metres away from the LRA bush headquarters - has a water point, portable toilets and storage huts.

International delegates are flown in and out by helicopter, along with hundreds of plastic chairs, a generator, and a lunch of rice and stew. Facilities for the international delegates has effectively institutionalised the LRA in Ri-Kwangba; a major political and social shift for the secretive group which has hidden in the shadows for almost two decades.

Joseph Kony - still clearly revered by his followers as the spiritual head of the LRA - fiddles nervously in the meetings, clasping a small black diary like a prayer book, as he listens to international delegates discussing charges laid against him by the International Criminal Court.

Tall and slight, he made his first public appearance in a suit bought in London. The man who says he lives life by God's Ten Commandments maintains the puzzled look of a spectator.

He only becomes animated - a sudden wide smile and an extended hand - when greeted in Acholi by Ugandan observers from the Church and the northern constituencies.

Mostly, Kony appears to follow the lead of his second in command, Vincent Otti.

In the Ri-Kwangba talks, he often stood one pace behind Otti, watching him bargain and banter, following Otti's finger, line by line as the terms of a new agreement were patiently read to him. Otti is referred to as 'the boss' by the LRA soldiers and delegates.

"When you talk to Otti, Kony is always lurking behind. Otti is the medium through which Kony does his thing. It puts Otti in a very central role," says Prof. Morris Ogenga-Latigo, MP Agago County who was part of the observers.

"Many people have mistaken Otti as the driving force. But no, not at all, it's still Joseph Kony driving the whole process." Chief mediator Riek Machar agrees that although Otti is the 'front man', Kony remains in charge.

ICC charges against Kony and Otti, include killings, mutilations, sexual enslavement, mass burning of houses and camp settlements, child abductions, forced recruitment, and the massacre of 300 people in Otti's own village.

Uganda: Any Alternative to the ICC Should Meet Key Benchmarks

From Human Rights Watch

Any proposed alternative to International Criminal Court (ICC) trials for the most serious crimes committed in northern Uganda must include fair, credible prosecutions accompanied by penalties that reflect the gravity of the crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a memorandum made public today.

Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are expected to resume and take up issues of accountability and reconciliation on Thursday. The talks have been taking place in Juba, the regional capital of southern Sudan, on and off since last July.

In a memorandum directed to parties involved in the peace talks, Human Rights Watch details benchmarks that must be met for any national trial to be an appropriate alternative under the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute and international human rights standards. Human Rights Watch said that prosecutions for the most serious crimes, along with broader accountability measures for lesser offenses, are essential to ensure justice and a sustainable peace.

“In northern Uganda’s 21-year conflict, horrific crimes have been committed,” said Richard Dicker, International Justice director at Human Rights Watch. “Fair and credible prosecutions with appropriate penalties will tell would-be perpetrators that no one is above the law, thereby helping to promote a peace that is durable.”

ICC arrest warrants for four LRA leaders on war crimes and crimes against humanity provide a major opportunity to ensure justice is done for at least some of the crimes. At the same time, some involved with the peace talks are exploring possible national alternatives to ICC prosecutions to help facilitate a peace agreement. These include national trials, traditional justice, truth commissions, or a combination thereof.

“The ICC warrants for LRA leaders are a crucial step toward ensuring justice in northern Uganda,” said Dicker. “In fact, the ICC permits, and actually favors, national prosecutions where possible. But any alternative to the ICC would need to meet serious benchmarks.”

Uganda: Withdraw The ICC Warrants Or We'll Fight On Says LRA

From the East African

The International Criminal Court warrants issued against four Lord's Resistance Army commanders remain a sticking point in the Juba peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA. Martin Ojul, the rebels' chief negotiator, was in Nairobi recently and spoke to ZACHARY OCHIENG about his organisation's stand

Early this month, the Government of Uganda and the LRA/M signed an agreement on comprehensive solutions to the northern Uganda conflict.

We signed the agreement in the best interest of the LRA. That is why it took us very little time to append our signatures. However, I must emphasise that the agreement only deals with a small part of the root causes of the conflict and its possible solutions. The agreement can only be complete after a protocol on the same is implemented.

We are currently preparing for a consultative meeting with all Ugandans so that the views and concerns raised can be given due attention. The meeting will be held under Agenda No. 2, which looks at the main causes of the conflict. It is this meeting that will inform the basis of the protocol.

The Ugandan government maintains that the ICC warrants issued against your leaders will not be suspended or withdrawn until you have signed a comprehensive peace agreement, but your boss, Joseph Kony, and his deputy, Vincent Otti, say they will not sign any agreement before the warrants are withdrawn. Why are you participating in the peace talks when a stalemate is already imminent?

It is the ICC warrants that will either make or break the talks. While any peace negotiation calls for a spirit of give and take, the Ugandan government is using the ICC warrants to fight the LRA.

Our position is that when we move to Agenda No. 3, which deals with accountability and reconciliation, we will go through the traditional justice system known as Matoput, where we will confess any crimes we might have committed, ask for forgiveness, and where possible, make reparations.

We also have plenty of evidence of atrocities perpetrated by the Ugandan government, including video recordings, which could land some government officials before the ICC. However, if the warrants are not lifted, we shall definitely go back to war.

But Uganda is a signatory to the Rome Statute of the ICC. How do you expect the warrants to be lifted?

When Uganda signed the Rome Statute, it never sought the consent of parliament. Even as we speak, no law has been enacted to officially make Uganda a signatory to the Rome Statute.

In fact, Uganda almost withdrew from the ICC when a warrant was issued against Thomas Olubanga, the leader of a rebel group in eastern DRC and a friend of President Yoweri Museveni. President Museveni wrote to the ICC to withdraw the warrant for the sake of peace in the DRC. We want him to do the same for us.

LRA troops have reportedly been crossing into the Central African Republic for guerilla training, raising speculation that you could be regrouping for war. Is this true?

That is not true. The media reports are part of Museveni's propaganda. All our soldiers are at the assembly points in Owiny-Kibul and Ri-Kwangba. Those at Owiny-Kibul are currently crossing the River Nile to link up with the rest at Ri-Kwangba. In fact, both Dr Riak Machar, the chief mediator, and Joaquim Chissano, the UN special envoy to northern Uganda, met with our soldiers at the assembly points during the period we boycotted Juba. We have no soldiers in the Central African Republic.

When the talks resumed in Juba last month, you indicated that the LRA delegation needed conflict resolution experts in order to participate effectively. Have you made any progress?

So far, the composition of the delegation has not changed. But we hope to get some experts very soon.

You had an ally, the Africa Peace Point , which was initially, in principle, mandated to offer the LRA humanitarian assistance and boost your mediation team, but was inexplicably locked out when the talks resumed. What happened?

There is no explanation as to why the Africa Peace Point was excluded from the talks. But we have talked to Dr Machar and Mr Chissano, who have agreed in principle that the APP can send a team, which will be stationed at the LRA peace secretariat. We have also talked to the Africa Peace Point officials, and they have expressed willingness to go back to Juba. That is one of the reasons we came to Nairobi.

On May 12, you issued a press statement saying the LRA delegation is being denied basic facilities at the Juba Bridge Hotel due to non-payment of bills. What became of the financial pledges by the international community?

The pledges were all verbal, and we would like those who made them to put them down in writing. When we demanded a change of venue, they convinced us to go back to Juba, promising that the situation would improve. But that did not happen. We are forced to use dirty bedding and many of us have fallen ill after eating recycled food. We now buy food from outside to avoid getting sick. If the situation does not improve, we may be forced to review our stand on Juba. Currently, the UN owes the hotel $167,000 in unpaid bills. There is just too much bureaucracy at the UN with regard to releasing funds.

How soon do you think a comprehensive peace agreement will be achieved?

You cannot give a time frame for the peace process. It will depend on the ability of both parties to agree on the issues at hand. Above all, it will depend on the government's willingness to admit its mistakes. With the ICC warrants still hanging over the heads of our commanders, it is hard to tell how long the talks will take.

Dr Machar continues to be the chief mediator even though you have expressed misgivings about him. How has he handled the LRA delegation since the talks resumed?

Dr Machar is now more flexible. In fact, the agreement on comprehensive solutions was signed in his absence. At least now he is listening to both parties.

Besides the ICC warrant, what other hurdles stand in the way of the peace talks?

The continued presence of UPDF forces, who attack our soldiers. This provocation obviously threatens the peace process.

Away

I am going to be away until Wednesday, May 30th.

Until then, please visit Passion of the Present for all the latest news.

Darfur: AU Says 3-4 Months Needed to Get UN Soldiers In

From Reuters

U.N. military personnel set to bolster African peacekeepers in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur need at least three to four months to get in place, a senior African Union officer said on Wednesday. But the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity at the wind-swept AU base at el-Geneina where some of the African Union's roughly 7,000 Darfur peacekeepers are housed in tents, said only a much larger peacekeeping force could ultimately stem violence in Darfur.

The United Nations estimates that about 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million made homeless since ethnic and political conflict flared in Darfur in 2003 when rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum, accusing it of neglect.

Sudan says only 9,000 have died. A 2006 peace deal between the government and one rebel faction has so far failed to halt the violence.

The U.N. reinforcements, about 1,000 of which will be posted at el-Geneina in West Darfur, are due to come as part of a U.N. "heavy support package" of more than 3,000 U.N. military personnel for Darfur that Khartoum agreed to in April. "We are looking at the timeline and the troop contributing countries and the preparations. ... I think the minimum is three to four months," he told journalists on the sidelines of a fact-finding mission to Darfur by an AU Peace and Security Council delegation.

He said the African Union base at el-Geneina would be expanded to make room for the influx there, and solid structures would be built to house the newcomers.

In addition to around 1,000 U.N. personnel expected at el-Geneina, around 2,000 more would be divided between two remaining Darfur sectors, the officer said.

But the officer said that while attack helicopters included in the heavy support package would help deter attacks on AU patrols, the personnel influx was too small to significantly decrease violence in Darfur.

"Eventually, I think they (Sudan) will have to accept either a hybrid or a bigger force, whatever they call it," he said.

"We can only decrease (violence) if our troop levels are doubled or tripled. We would prefer 18,000-plus because the size of the area is huge," he said. He added the attack helicopters would only be used as a deterrent and in self-defence.

Khartoum has not approved a "hybrid" U.N.-AU force of more than 20,000 troops and police approved by the world body. African Union officials said that after delays, forces were also resuming patrols on Wednesday in a Darfur village where five Senegalese soldiers were killed last month in the deadliest single attack on the force since its 2004 deployment.

Officials said they believed the patrols had resumed, but were still waiting on word from Um Barro on how the patrols had proceeded. The African Union suspended patrols near Um Barro last month after gunmen killed the peacekeepers as they guarded a water point near the Chadian border. Three gunmen were also killed.

The attack took place in an area of North Darfur controlled by forces loyal to the SLM. Since the attack, African Union soldiers posted nearby had been largely confined to their camp, officials said.

Darfur: Spielberg Donates $1 Million to Clooney Campaign

From Contact Music

STEVEN SPIELBERG has donated $1 million (GBP500,000) to the OCEAN'S THIRTEEN African charity push after learning stars like GEORGE CLOONEY and BRAD PITT had raised $8 million (GBP4 million) at the Cannes Film Festival. The cast of the movie staged a fundraising evening for their Save Darfur campaign at the festival at the weekend - and raised a fortune. Ocean's Thirteen producer Jerry Weintraub reveals, "We've raised $9.2 million (GBP18.4 million). We had $8 million and then Spielberg sent in another $1 million. "(Brad) Pitt, (Don) Cheadle have been all over to the Sudan and we're just trying to shine a light on what's happening over there." Fundraisers are being planned to accompany every upcoming Ocean's Thirteen premiere.

Darfur: UN Rights Experts Begin Probe

From AFP

A group of United Nations human rights experts on Wednesday began examining the situation in the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, under the terms of a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council, a UN source said.

The group of seven independent experts is due to meet Sudanese government representatives on Thursday in order to "identify concrete measures to help improve the human rights situation in Darfur", the source added.

The group, led by Simi Samar, the UN special rapporteur on Sudan, will report on the situation on the ground and press for the implementation of resolutions by the council and other UN human rights bodies.

It was set up by the 47-member Human Rights Council in March following a report by Nobel laureate and anti-landmines campaigner Jody Williams, which sharply criticised Sudan's role in human rights abuses in Darfur.

The high-level report by Williams and her team found that Sudan's government had "orchestrated and participated in" war crimes and human rights abuses such as rape and torture across the region.

The new working group will present its conclusions to the next session of the Human Rights Council, which will meet in Geneva from June 11 to 18.

Darfur: Embattled AU Force Still Proud

Unbelievable. The SLM kills five AU peacekeepers and the AU ends up paying compensation to the SLM - From AFP

Some of its men have not been paid for four months and, with few helicopters or troop carriers, it has to rely on diplomacy to keep the peace, but the beleaguered African Union force in Darfur insists it is still making a difference.

"There are difficulties, you couldn't deny it," the 7,000-strong force's number two Hassan Gibril Alieu tells AFP at force headquarters in the region's main town of El Fasher.

"But it would be wrong to say that the mission is close to collapse," he adds, in allusion to reports in the US press that the African governments which have contributed troops to the three-year-old force are about to throw in the towel.

A Senegalese soldier acknowledges to AFP that some troops in his contingent have not received their salaries for four months.

"It's irritating because we can't even buy cigarettes or phone home from down there," he says, swiftly adding that the arrears have not affected the discipline of the men.

The African Union force has paid a high price for its efforts to stem the violence in Darfur, which has killed at least 200,000 people and sent more than two million fleeing their homes in the past four years.

The force has lost 19 of its men dead or missing and had some 100 of its vehicles stolen, further complicating its problems in patrolling a region the size of France.

The force is supposed to be receiving logistical backup from the United Nations in a bid to beef up its effectiveness but plans to send out UN peacekeepers to create a combined 20,000-strong force have fallen foul of Sudanese government objections.

Even the UN support that Khartoum has approved is taking a long time to materialise.

Thirty-six armoured personnel carriers that are supposed to be lent to the AU force have yet to arrive in the region and of 100 officers and police advisers being seconded from the United Nations, 36 are still languishing in the capital Khartoum, according to UN officials.

Six assault helicopters and 3,000 additional peacekeepers that are due to be deployed in a second phase are unlikely to arrive for six months, the officials added.

The force's logistical problems mean that it has a poor reputation among the residents of Darfur. Its police contingent which is supposed to keep order in the displaced persons' camps that dot the region is widely deemed ineffective with persistent reports of rapes and murders.

"All they do is write reports -- nothing is ever settled," complains Mohammed Ahmed, 40, one of around 45,000 civilians holed up in the As-Salem camp outside El Fasher.

When violence does break out, force commanders have to rely on their powers of tact and diplomacy to negotiate a solution. Their mandate does not allow them to intervene, except in self-defence, and in any case they do not have the means to impose a peace.

Last month, clashes broke out in the desert north of Darfur close to the Chadian border. Five Senegalese peacekeepers lost their lives, as did two rebel fighters and a Sudanese civilian.

The Senegalese government is adamant that the violence was the fault of the mainstream faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, the only one of the myriad ethnic minority rebel groups in Darfur that is supposed to be bound by a peace agreement with the government.

But as anger over the losses on both sides threatens to undermine the African Union's ability to patrol areas held by the group's fighters, the force's deputy commander was forced to fly up to try to thrash out a deal.

The flight across the lunar landscape of northern Darfur takes 90 minutes aboard one of the force's Russian-made MI-8 helicopters.

Waiting in the small settlement of Umm Baro are local notables of the Zaghawa, an ethnic group that straddles the Sudan-Chad border and is strongly represented within the SLM-mainstream, as well as local AU commanders.

Alieu is careful not to blame the group's fighters for the deaths of his peacekeepers as he pleads for a resumption of the AU's patrols in the area and for access by all sides to a vital water source.

"What happened on April 1 was the work of the devil," the deputy commander says, swiftly adding to the assembled notables: "Let's put this incident behind us and renew our cooperation."

But it is only when the rebels' local commander arrives at the meeting in a briefing room in the small AU garrison that the real bargaining gets under way.

His face concealed with a turban and dark glasses, Harun Saleh -- nicknamed Abu Tawil, or father of tall sons, because of his stature -- tells Alieu that he wants compensation for the two dead fighters as well as the dead civilian.

He denies that his men had anything to do with the peacekeepers' deaths.

One of the Zaghawa notables quickly echoes the demand calling for diya or blood money to be paid for the three Sudanese. He also demands that the African Union allow the use of its helicopters to take sick people in Umm Baro for hospital treatment in El Fasher.

Alieu retorts that the peacekeeping mission cannot take on the government's responsibility to provide health care.

He adds that he has to account to AU headquarters in Addis Adaba for every precious hour of flying time he uses, but eventually concedes that his men will help out "when it is possible."

But it fails to persuade the SLM delegation and another of its commanders, Ahmed Ismail reiterates: "No compensation, no renewal of cooperation."

Eventually after four hours of bargaining, Alieu finally agrees that the AU will pay compensation. A panel made up of AU and SLM commanders as well as local notables is to decide the amounts.

In return, the SLM agrees to allow the resumption of AU patrols in three days.

The agreement is the sort of uncomfortable compromise that AU commanders are forced to make every day as they try to navigate a middle path between the conflicting demands of the Sudanese government and the rebels, not to mention troop-contributing nations.

But they remain adamant that the plight of the people of Darfur would be far worse without their efforts.

"Imagine for a moment what the situation would be like if we weren't here," one commander tells AFP back at HQ in El Fasher.

Darfur: Aid Groups Not Free to Speak About Situation

From Reuters

Most aid agencies in Darfur cannot speak openly about the humanitarian situation in the violent west of Sudan for fear of jeopardising their work or being thrown out, according to a Reuters AlertNet poll released on Thursday.

Four-fifths of those surveyed said they could not talk about who was behind attacks on civilians and aid workers in case they upset the government or suffered reprisals from militias and rebels. More than two-thirds would not discuss rape.

"Speaking about touchy issues might result in restrictions and an order to leave the country which we do not want to risk, considering many people depend upon our support," one agency told aid information Web site AlertNet.

The conflict has triggered the world's biggest relief operation with aid workers helping some 2.5 million people who have been forced to flee their homes.

But two-thirds of the 46 international agencies polled said they could not speak freely about the humanitarian situation. Almost all asked to remain anonymous to avoid repercussions.

"All humanitarians are considered as spies against the government," one aid worker said.

"If we speak openly ... we find that the government will then restrict our access to programme areas by delaying visas, travel permits etc," another agency said.

"They will also withdraw support, such as protection against bandits and searching for stolen vehicles and kidnapped drivers."

Darfur is one of the most dangerous regions for aid workers -- 34 have been killed since 2004 and scores wounded. Gunmen have stormed agency compounds, abducted relief workers, shot at aid convoys and stolen vehicles.

But many agencies said they would not publicly identify perpetrators for fear of endangering staff. They also said it was vital they were seen as neutral to maintain access to those in need. Several stressed it was often hard to know who was behind attacks.

"I'm thinking all the time about the security of our staff -- if there could be any retribution. That's our main concern," one agency official said.

"There might be attacks or rapes or robberies against our own staff or the people in our programme (if we comment)."

The ethnic and political conflict flared in 2003 when rebels took up arms, saying the government was neglecting the region.

Khartoum is accused of using Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to crush the revolt -- a charge it denies. The United Nations says 200,000 people have been killed although Sudan says the figure is 9,000.

Rights groups accuse the Janjaweed of widespread rape as part of a terror campaign. But Khartoum says rape is not part of Sudanese culture.

"Rape is a completely taboo subject. The Sudanese government does not want to hear about it," one aid worker said, adding that their agency had suppressed reports on the issue fearing Khartoum could limit their operations or even expel them.

Most organisations were also reluctant to talk about restrictions on their work.

"If you decide to be vocal, you might spoil the only chance you have to help those in real need," one group said.

The majority of agencies said they could speak about conditions in camps, aid distribution and food shortages.

The poll was conducted in May. Five organisations declined to take part.

Darfur: Sudan's Enablers

An op-ed by Jody Williams and Mia Farrow in The Wall Street Journal

We met in Abeche, eastern Chad, in February of this year. We were both working for the United Nations, focusing on the violence in Darfur and how it has spilled over into local and refugee populations in Chad and the Central African Republic. We had something else in common as well: Both of us had been inadvertently funding the atrocities we were trying to stop.

This funding came through our investments in companies such as Fidelity, which has major holdings in PetroChina and Sinopec -- two Chinese oil companies that have poured billions into Khartoum's coffers. At least 70% of Sudan's oil revenues have been used by Khartoum to purchase attack helicopters, Antonov bombers and small arms used to kill and inflict immeasurable suffering upon the population of Darfur.

After discovering our indirect complicity in Khartoum's crimes, we moved our pension plans into investment companies that are not enabling mass atrocities. We also resolved to become more involved with the various efforts to divest from companies doing business with Sudan.

Fidelity has not been the only, or even the largest, U.S. firm enabling the slaughter in Darfur. Earlier this month, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, which has roughly $3 billion invested in PetroChina, voted not only against divesting, but against taking any shareholder action on the issue.

Mr. Buffett points out that only PetroChina's parent company, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), operates in Sudan. Since subsidiaries generally do not have control over parent company operations, Mr. Buffett argues that targeting PetroChina for CNPC's transgressions is misguided. But PetroChina and CNPC are two faces of the same entity. The management of the two overlaps: The president of CNPC is the president of PetroChina, and the CFO of CNPC is PetroChina's CFO as well. Billions of dollars are routinely transferred between the companies. PetroChina is CNPC's largest customer and accounts for at least 63% of CNPC's total assets. Furthermore, PetroChina was explicitly set up to shield CNPC from investor scrutiny and complaints about the underwriting of atrocities in Sudan.

Mr. Buffett states that the real problem in Sudan is with China, not CNPC and PetroChina. But China's interests in Sudan are represented almost entirely by CNPC/PetroChina, which exports between 50% and 80% of Sudan's oil to mainland China.

Finally, Mr. Buffett claims that if PetroChina/CNPC withdrew from Sudan, Khartoum would take its oil business elsewhere. But the more likely result of pressure from Mr. Buffett would be that China, which has nothing to gain from withdrawing its oil interests, would instead use its leverage to pressure the Sudanese Government to halt the atrocities in Darfur.

Mr. Buffett has been justly lauded for his generous contributions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But it is difficult to comprehend how a man can be a true humanitarian while offering billions of dollars to a company that is underwriting Khartoum's crimes. Only China invests more money in PetroChina/CNPC than Berkshire Hathaway.

How many more Sudanese villages will be destroyed? How many more hundreds of thousands will be displaced? How many more women will be raped? How many more families will be torn apart? How many more children will die of violence, disease and hunger? How much longer will the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway ignore their moral responsibility to discontinue their support of a company so intimately connected to crimes against humanity?

Darfur: Khartoum Still Protecting Militias

From AFP

Amnesty International has sharply criticised Sudan for failing to disarm Janjaweed militias and for not probing complaints of atrocities in Darfur, in its 2006 annual report published on Wednesday.

"A government promise to disarm the Janjaweed was broken, as it had been after numerous previous agreements," the London-based human rights group said.

"Rapes of women by Janjaweed militias in Darfur remained systematic ... The perpetrators benefited from almost complete impunity," it added.

"Authorities routinely took no effective action to investigate women's complaints of rape. At worst, raped women were arrested for adultery," it continued.

The conflict in the western Sudanese region erupted in February 2003 when ethnic minority rebels attacked an army garrison in Darfur. Government forces backed by Janjaweed militias responded with a scorched-earth campaign.

Once just raiding nomads, the Kalashnikov-wielding Arab tribesmen were transformed into well-armed militias during the brutal suppression of the rebellion, which Washington has said amounted to genocide.

Khartoum has repeatedly denied charges that it sponsored the militias.

One rebel faction signed a May 2006 peace deal with the government, one clause of which required the government to disarm the Janjaweed.

"Some Janjaweed were incorporated into the armed forces or remained in paramilitary units and continued receiving financial and material assistance from the government," the Amnesty report said.

"The government took no action to halt cross-border Janjaweed attacks against targeted ethnic groups in Chad, which resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians and tens of thousands of displacements during the first half of the year," it added.

The report also accused the government of having "indiscriminately or directly bombed civilians."

Darfur: Sudan Bans Reporting on Rebels

From the Sudan Tribune

The Sudanese press body has banned the local newspapers from publishing news reports related to the rebel groups because they undermine the security in the country.

The National Press and Publications Council Tuesday requested daily newspapers not to publish reports and activities of the rebel movements and not to interview its political leaders and as well as its field commanders.

The council urged newspapers not to “give publicity to the rebel movements and not to report on their threats and statements that undermine country’s security, instigate fear, and create instability”, the statement said.

This ban comes after a statement by one of Darfur rebel to the Khartoum based Al-Sahafa accusing the government forces and its backed militia of killing five civilian in North Darfur two days ago.

The council said all should agree not to give publicity to any rebel group, existing or under establishment, and not to give it a chance to issue false and irresponsible statements.

The Sudanese security service has ordered early today to stop the printing of al-Safaha pretexting that the printing workers did not fulfill an application dedicated to the security apparatus.

Darfur: No-Fly Zone Unworkable Says Top EU Soldier

From Reuters

A U.S.-backed proposal to stop Sudanese military aircraft flying over the war-ravaged western region of Darfur is technically unworkable, a top European Union soldier said on Tuesday.

President George W. Bush raised the prospect last month and Britain wants the U.N. Security Council to impose a no-fly zone on Sudan as part of sanctions including broadening an arms ban.

But General Henri Bentegeat, the Frenchman who heads the EU's top military body, said the size of the 500,000-square-km (200,000-square-mile) territory made such a plan unfeasible.

"A no-fly zone is technically impossible. Darfur is around the same size as France," Bentegeat, who heads the EU Military Committee on which the bloc's 27 member states coordinate defence policy, told Reuters in an interview.

"You would need at least 60 combat aircraft to enforce it correctly. And there would be the question of distinguishing between helicopters," Bentegeat warned of possibly lethal confusion between Sudanese, U.N. and other aircraft.

He said there was no alternative to maintaining pressure on Khartoum to let international troops join a 7,000-strong African Union force that has so far failed to quell the violence.

"Darfur has descended into chaos," said Bentegeat, whose postings in the French army included Senegal and Djibouti. "The only viable solution is the deployment of a very large force that would throw a security net around the region."

Darfur: Egeland Says China Must Do More

From Reutersr

China must do more to stop the Darfur conflict in Sudan, said former U.N. aid chief Jan Egeland, while the United States should focus on trying to build peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

Egeland, now a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also said he spent too much time in Washington instead of Beijing as he tried to draw attention to Darfur while he was U.N. emergency relief coordinator.

"Darfur -- I don't think the United States can unlock. In the Palestinian conflict I think they can," he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday.

"The U.S. and the U.K. did all the right things on Darfur and it had little effect," he said. "We should have had a wider coalition in the beginning and I blame myself for not going to Beijing more and less to Congress."

He said public campaigns for action should have earlier targeted countries who invest in Darfur, like China and India, to push them to pressure Sudan to resolve the four-year-old conflict in Darfur.

"We have to ask what should China do? What should India do? What should the new superpowers do? Because in Africa they are the most active players," he said, describing it as a "mistake" not to have targeted those countries earlier.

Darfur: Visiting China Envoy Says Region "Basically Stable"

From Reuters

A visiting Chinese envoy believes Darfur is "basically stable", Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday, adding that his trip showed how serious Beijing was about bringing peace to the strife-torn region of Sudan.

Human rights groups and Western politicians have condemned China over its stance on Darfur, where state-linked militia have been fighting rebels, causing widespread bloodshed.

China, a major customer for Sudan's oil, has blocked deployment of international peacekeepers without Khartoum's nod, prompting some critics to accuse Beijing of abetting genocide.

Chinese envoy Liu Guijin met regional government leaders on Tuesday and chatted to people in the streets and markets of el-Fasher, North Darfur's main town, where he received a warm welcome, Xinhua said.

"Liu visited three refugee camps to understand their living conditions and humanitarian aid situation," Xinhua said.

"He stressed that from his visit and observations, he felt the situation in Darfur was basically stable, which showed the Sudanese government had already made a lot of effort at solving the Darfur problem."

China, which also sells Sudan weapons, has been trying to brush up its international image ahead of next year's Beijing Olympics.

"The Chinese government has recently appointed a special representative on the Darfur problem, and this envoy has made a speedy trip there," Xinhua said.

"This demonstrates the high level of attention the Chinese government attaches to solving the Darfur issue and its sincere wish to help out."

Darfur: U.S. Investors Face Continued Pressure to Sell Holdings

From the AP

Save Darfur Coalition and other groups seeking an end to the bloody conflict in Sudan have been pressing mutual funds, pension funds and endowments to sever financial ties to companies that operate in the African nation.

The groups' efforts represent what some observers see as a larger push toward what's called socially responsible investing. It remains unclear, however, how far-reaching the effects of these groups will be.

"People through their investments may unwittingly help fund the genocide that's going on in Darfur," a region in Western Sudan, said Allyn Brooks-LaSure, spokesman for the Save Darfur Coalition.

The cause for the activists' alarm is clear, as the conflict in Sudan has exacted a heavy human toll. Fighting between ethnic African rebels and the Sudanese government, which is backed by Arab janjaweed militias, has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced some 2.5 million since the violence began in 2003.

The activists contend that holding investments in companies that operate there makes investors complicit in supporting the conflict.

Some big investors are responding. Kansas, taking cues from California, this month passed a law prohibiting the state's largest pension fund from investing in companies that operate in Sudan. And the University of Illinois in recent weeks joined dozens of other U.S. universities in vowing to sell investments in companies that do business there.

"I think the groups are trying to shed some light on the connection between outrageous behavior in some part of the world, like genocide, and the money connection to the average investor through their company-sponsored retirement plan or their pension plan. They're trying to make a connection between two seemingly different worlds," said Jeff Tjornehoj, an analyst at Lipper Inc., which tracks funds.

In recent weeks, Fidelity Investments, the largest U.S. mutual fund company, disclosed it slashed the stake that its domestic funds hold in China's largest oil producer, PetroChina Co., which invests in the Sudanese government's oil exploration efforts. However, Fidelity has said repeatedly its move wasn't the result of outside pressure and that it doesn't tell its fund mangers when to buy or sell stock.

Dan Lefkovitz, an analyst who covers Fidelity at investment research provider Morningstar Inc., isn't convinced, however, the company bowed to the public relations campaign waged by groups like the Save Darfur Coalition.

"I haven't seen anything to really confirm that the reason they reduced the PetroChina stake is because of Save Darfur. I just don't think they operate that way," he said referring to the process Fidelity's investment managers use in deciding where to invest.

But even as some companies reduce their investments in Sudan, for whatever reason, other companies appear unmoved by pressure to follow suit.

Earlier this month, shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the company controlled by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, voted by a wide margin against a proposal to sell the company's stake in PetroChina.

Darfur: The Return of Alan Kuperman

I have been reluctant to post this piece by Alan Kuperman because (a) I don't really have any idea what Spero News is and (b) I disagree with the cynical contrarian academic niche Kuperman has managed to carve out for himself.

Kuperman's shtick seems to be to analyze a complex situation, claim that said situation is even more complex than most people understand, and then declare that that the rebels or whatever group is fighting the government are really the ones responsible for the horrors that have befallen or are befalling the innocent civilians in the region.

This passage from his Spero News piece pretty much sums up Kuperman's technique:

But the situation for Rwanda’s Tutsi—both within and outside Rwanda—wasn’t so terrible during those decades. No one was being killed, ethnically cleansed, or badly oppressed. In fact, some Tutsi were thriving. In Uganda, the chief of staff and the head of intelligence of the Army were both Rwandan Tutsi. There was even some resentment in Uganda because the Tutsi refugees were faring better than native Ugandans. Despite this, it was the decision by some Rwandan Tutsi refugees to invade Rwanda that triggered the set of events that led to the genocide. So there is a relationship between lack of freedom and genocide, but it’s not the simplistic story that one might imagine. This is not to excuse but to explain what happened.

So everything was fine in Rwanda until the RPF invaded and pushed the government into committing genocide and killing nearly a million people.

Not surprisingly, Kuperman offers a similar explanation of what happened in Darfur:

The best explanation for why rebellion occurred in 2003 is as a response to the 2002 peace settlement of the north-south civil war, with its provisions for revenue sharing. Darfurians observed that the south had obtained this financial reward by rebelling and attracting international support, which compelled the government to cut a deal. So they too rebelled. The government retaliated, just as it had in the south, with its army, aerial bombing, and recruitment of local militias, which in this case are known as Janjaweed. It’s a repeat of what happened in the south but accelerated. In the first year alone, 2 million Darfurians were displaced; 100,000 made refugees in neighboring Chad; and tens of thousands died.

Just as the Darfur rebels hoped, this explosion of violence brought international pressure on the Khartoum regime, compelling it to sign a peace agreement in 2006 making certain concessions to the Darfur region. The government did not agree to huge revenue sharing, as it had with the south, but did concede to increased local autonomy and a small amount of reparations for the war. But most of the rebels didn’t agree to this peace, because they had not gotten as good a deal as the south did. So the rebels fight on to this day, and the government continues to respond with a brutal counterinsurgency. The big losers are Darfur’s civilians, who are caught in the middle.

This account of Darfur’s history, which partially implicates the rebels for perpetuating the region’s suffering, outrages many intervention advocates, who lay exclusive blame on the Khartoum regime. But the rebels are willing to sacrifice their own civilians in order to get international attention and thereby more power.

Kuperman made this same point in an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times last year and I wrote a post taking issue with it shortly thereafter.

This time around, Kuperman blames the rebels for refusing to sign the DPA because they didn't get a good enough deal which, frankly, seems to be a pretty legitimate reason not to sign a peace deal to me. But, be that as it may, if Kuperman is going to try and blame the rebels for the failed peace accord, he might want to consider mentioning this rather basic but important fact:

Sudanese government officials here said Sunday they would accept the peace plan, but their agreement came only after it became apparent that at least some of the rebels would balk.

The rebels certainly are not the "good guys" in Darfur - outside of the NGO's, there are no good guys in Darfur, but are they really "willing to sacrifice their own civilians in order to get international attention and thereby more power"? Maybe, I don't know.

But I do know that it is primarily because of Khartoum that thousands of villages have been destroyed, some 400,000 people have died, millions more have been displaced, Chad and the Central African Republic are suffering their own humanitarian crises, the AU cannot protect civilians, and no UN force can get into the country.

Last time I checked, the people being killed were citizens of Sudan and they were being killed by their own government and their proxy militia. It is Khartoum's responsibility to protect its citizens and if anyone is "sacrificing their own civilians in order to get more power," it is the regime in Khartoum.

When his piece appeared in the New York Times last year, it was quickly posted on the Sudanese website, as was an even earlier piece he had in the Washington Post, which gives you a pretty good sense of just who buys Kuperman's "blame the victims" arguments.

The only good thing I have to say about Kuperman's piece is that I'm glad he seems to have been reduced to publishing his claptrap on places like Spero News and not in The New York Times.

Darfur: Fresh Clashes Blamed on Government

From IRIN

A Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) faction has blamed Sudanese government forces for fresh attacks on its positions in North Darfur, saying aerial bombardment had been employed against its fighters.

Sudanese government forces clashed with rebels over the weekend in the Rockero area of North Darfur state, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported, adding that it was unable to estimate the number of casualties following the violence.

A spokesman for the faction, Jar Al Nabi Abdal Karim, said government forces had resumed attacks in the area, citing other incidents in Malam al Hosh and in the Jabal Moon region. At least five people died, he added.

Government officials denied the reports, according to local reports in the Sudanese media on 22 May, saying only aerial reconnaissance had been carried out in the area.

UNMIS also reported clashes in Abu Surug in South Darfur state, adding that the local defence force had fought about 120 armed men, believed to be from an Arab militia, on Saturday.

The reports of attacks come amid reports of more internally displaced persons (IDPs) arriving at Al Salam camp in South Darfur in the past few days, driven by the recent attacks on their villages by armed militiamen.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson, has said formal political negotiations to resolve the Darfur conflict could begin soon. Many of the warring parties, he said, had indicated their readiness to sit down to talk.

"We have the beginning now of a credible political process," Eliasson told reporters on Friday. "We are now at the stage where we will practically prepare for the negotiations."

CAR: International Criminal Court Opens Probe

From the ICC

Today, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced the decision to open an investigation in the Central African Republic: “My Office has carefully reviewed information from a range of sources. We believe that grave crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the Court were committed in the Central African Republic. We will conduct our own independent investigation, gather evidence, and prosecute the individuals who are most responsible.”

Based on a preliminary analysis of alleged crimes, the peak of violence and criminality occurred in 2002 and 2003. Civilians were killed and raped; and homes and stores were looted. The alleged crimes occurred in the context of an armed conflict between the government and rebel forces.

This is the first time the Prosecutor is opening an investigation in which allegations of sexual crimes far outnumber alleged killings. According to the Prosecutor, “The allegations of sexual crimes are detailed and substantiated. The information we have now suggests that the rape of civilians was committed in numbers that cannot be ignored under international law.”

Hundreds of rape victims have come forward to tell their stories, recounting crimes acted out with particular cruelty. Reports detailing their accounts were ultimately provided to the Prosecutor’s Office. Victims described being raped in public; being attacked by multiple perpetrators; being raped in the presence of family members; and being abused in other ways if they resisted their attackers. Many of the victims were subsequently shunned by their families and communities. “These victims are calling for justice,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said.

The government of the Central African Republic referred the situation to the Prosecutor. The Cour de Cassation, the country’s highest judicial body, subsequently confirmed that the national justice system was unable to carry out the complex proceedings necessary to investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes. The ruling was an important factor because under the Rome Statute, the ICC is a Court of last resort and intervenes in situations only when national judicial authorities are unable or unwilling to conduct genuine proceedings.

To reach the decision to open an investigation, the Office of the Prosecutor reviewed information provided by the government in its referral, NGOs, international organisations, and other highly knowledgeable sources. Investigators working for the Office of the Prosecutor will now begin collecting criminal evidence, with a focus on the peak periods of violence. The investigation is not targeting any particular suspect at this stage and will be guided solely by the evidence that emerges.

While investigating crimes allegedly committed in 2002 and 2003, the Office continues to monitor the current situation in the Central African Republic. There are worrying reports of violence and crimes being committed in the northern areas of the country bordering Chad and Sudan.

The launch of this criminal investigation occurs in the context of insecurity and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the country, in particular for displaced persons and children. The Office of the Prosecutor supports efforts by the United Nations and others to achieve a comprehensive solution where lasting security can be established, humanitarian assistance delivered, and development and education promoted.

“In the interests of deterring future violence and promoting enduring peace in the region, we have a duty to show that massive crimes cannot be committed with impunity. We will do our part, working through our judicial mandate,” Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo said.

From the UN News Center

Acting on a referral by the Government of the Central African Republic (CAR), the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) today announced an investigation into alleged crimes - especially widespread rape - committed there in 2002 and 2003, and voiced support for efforts by the United Nations to achieve a comprehensive solution to ongoing instability in the country.

“My Office has carefully reviewed information from a range of sources. We believe that grave crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the Court were committed in the Central African Republic,” said ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in a news release.

“We will conduct our own independent investigation, gather evidence, and prosecute the individuals who are most responsible.”

When the violence peaked during an armed conflict between the government and rebel forces in 2002 and 2003, civilians were killed and raped and homes and stores were looted, the ICC said, citing a preliminary analysis of alleged crimes.

The conflict was characterized by widespread use of rape, and the investigation marks the first time the Prosecutor is examining a situation where allegations of sexual crimes far outnumber alleged killings. “The information we have now suggests that the rape of civilians was committed in numbers that cannot be ignored under international law,” said Mr. Moreno-Ocampo.

At least 600 rape victims were identified in period of 5 months, said the Court, while cautioning that the real numbers are likely higher as sexual violence is customarily underreported.

Credible reports indicate that rape has been committed against civilians, including women, young girls and men. There were often aggravating aspects of cruelty such as rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, in front of third persons, with relatives sometimes forced to participate, the ICC said.

Many victims suffered social stigmatization and a number of them were infected with the HIV virus.

“These victims are calling for justice,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said.

The CAR's highest judicial body, the Cour de Cassation, said the national justice system was unable to carry out the complex proceedings necessary to investigate and prosecute the alleged crimes. Under the Rome Statute that created the ICC - and to which CAR is a party - the Court intervenes only when national judicial authorities are unable or unwilling to conduct genuine proceedings.

Even while investigating crimes allegedly committed in 2002 and 2003, the Prosecutor said he will continue to monitor the current situation in the CAR, citing what the Court termed “worrying reports of violence and crimes being committed in the northern areas of the country bordering Chad and Sudan.”

The impact of the conflict in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur is widely feared to be spilling over and causing instability in neighbouring States.

The launch of this criminal investigation occurs in the context of insecurity and deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the country, in particular for displaced persons and children,” the ICC said in a news release, voicing support for UN efforts to achieve a comprehensive solution where lasting security can be established, humanitarian assistance delivered, and development and education promoted.

“In the interests of deterring future violence and promoting enduring peace in the region, we have a duty to show that massive crimes cannot be committed with impunity. We will do our part, working through our judicial mandate,” Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo said.

The CAR Government ratified the Rome Statute on 3 October 2001. The ICC has jurisdiction in CAR since the entry into force of the Rome Statute on 1st July 2002. The Government referred the situation to the Office of the Prosecutor in December, 2004.

Darfur: “An Issue For Those Who Have No Issue”

From the Sudan Tribune

Sudan’s envoy to the UN Abdalhaleem Abdalmahmood blasted a visit by a US congressional delegation to the UN headquarters to discuss the Darfur crisis. Abdalmahmood said he was “disappointed” saying he expected US senator Joseph Biden to “come with clean hands and apologize to the UN for the mess that the US has done in Iraq”.

Sen. Joseph Biden, the aspiring Democratic nominee for US presidency, headed a bipartisan delegation and met yesterday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to receive an update on efforts made to resolve the Darfur crisis. Biden, who chairs the US Senate foreign relations committee, said in remarks following the meeting that he would commit US troops to end the Darfur crisis if it was his decision.

Abdalmahmood said that Biden’s discussion of the Darfur crisis is “unwarranted and out of context”. He sharply criticized the international focus on the Darfur crisis saying it has “become an issue for those who have no issue”. Sudan’s UN envoy said that the situation in Darfur is improving on the political and humanitarian track.

A three-phase plan floated last year by then UN chief Kofi Annan is supposed to culminate in the deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster the embattled African force in Darfur, a region the size of France.

But Khartoum has accepted only the first two stages of the plan, accusing the Western powers of plotting to recolonize the country under the guise of the UN mission. The second phase is supposed to set the infrastructure for the UN-AU hybrid forces as part if the final stage of the plan.

Abdalmahmood said that his government “fully agrees to the second phase without reservations”. He called on the UN & US to authorize funding to the African Union troops so that the second phase can be completed saying that the “ball is in their court now”.

The statements by Sudan’s UN envoy contrasted sharply with that of the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) spokesperson Radhia Achouri who said last week that the UN “will help the AU by providing support personnel and equipment but not paying up their budget”. Achouri stressed that “the African Union Mission in Sudan will continue to be financed through donations from member States”.

Abdalmahmood denied UN allegations of bombing raids by Sudan on Umrai calling it “rumors by the National Redemption Front [Darfur rebel faction]”. He said these news are spread by those who want to prolong the sufferings of the Darfur people.

Darfur: AU Chief Blasts Push for Sanction

From Xinhua

Visiting African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare dismissed attempts by some nations to slap sanctions on Sudan for the Darfur issue, saying time was "not appropriate at all for such a talk".

After meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Konare told a press conference that any sanction on Sudan for the Darfur issue could complicate the situation.

"What is strange is that some sides start talking about sanctions at a time when an agreement is reached with the Sudanese government," Konare said, quoted by Egypt’s official MENA news agency.

Some members of the UN Security Council, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, have been discussing imposing sanctions against Sudan for the Darfur issue.

Konare said the AU has, after long months, managed to reach an agreement with Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir, which allows to increase the number of foreign peacekeepers in Darfur to 20,000.

These forces will be under the command of the AU but will include soldiers from the UN, he said, adding the AU currently maintained a 7,800-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The AU, the UN and the Sudanese government agreed last November on a three-phase support plan, also known as the Annan plan as it was put forward by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Darfur: Biden Favors U.S. Troops

From the AP

Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Biden called again Monday for U.S. troops to help quell the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, drawing a strong rebuke from Sudan's U.N. envoy.

The comments from the Delaware senator, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came as he led a bipartisan delegation to the United Nations for talks with key U.N. officials.

"The bottom line was this: There's genocide taking place," Biden said, adding that the world can't wait several months for action on the ground.

"Were I able to make the decision, I would impose a no-fly zone immediately, and I would commit forces to stop the janjaweed now. But I am not making that decision."

Biden, who made a similar call last month, confirmed that the forces he was referring to were U.S. troops.

Darfur's conflict between ethnic African rebels and the government backed by Arab janjaweed militias has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million others. A beleaguered 7,000-strong African Union force has been unable to stop the fighting.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem, however, insisted "there is nothing in Darfur that is lagging," citing momentum for new political talks and movement on peacekeeping.

He said Biden's remarks were "not warranted at all because the peace process is moving."

President Bush warned a month ago that he would tighten economic sanctions and impose new ones unless Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir started making definite moves toward peace. Ban urged Bush to give diplomacy more time.

CAR: U.N. Says 2 Aid Workers Abducted

From the AP

Two local health workers employed by an Italian non-governmental organization have been kidnapped in the Central African Republic, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The two men, who work for Cooperazione Internazionale, were abducted last week in country's northwest region, near the borders with Cameroon and Chad, U.N. Children's Fund spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said, reading from a statement.

Both men are nationals of the impoverished African nation of 3.6 million people.

The United Nations is "highly concerned by the recent decline in the security situation" in the region, and condemned the kidnapping, Taveau said.

The U.N. has imposed a daily curfew and restricted the movement and activities of its agencies' workers in the areas around Bozoum, Bocaranga and Paoua.

CAR: Rebels to Release Child Soldiers

From AFP

Talks have begun on releasing some 400 child soldiers serving with former rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) and returning them to civilian life, the United Nations (UN) children’s agency Unicef said.

A statement said negotiations had started "with non-state armed groups for hundreds of child soldiers enrolled in the north-east of the Central African Republic (CAR) to be released and returned to their families."

There are an estimated 250,000 child soldiers fighting in 12 countries worldwide, mainly in Africa and Asia, with some countries deploying children "on a massive scale", according to the UN.

Since 2001, almost 95,000 have been demobilised including in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Afghanistan.

The former rebel chief in CAR, Damane Zakaria, had "agreed on releasing some 400 children," Unicef said. "A first list of 220 child soldiers has been given to Unicef."

Zakaria, commanding the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) in CAR which lies between Cameroon and Sudan, also said armed youngsters aged between 13 and 17 would be released.

"More than 400 children will be demobilised," he told AFP by phone. Zakaria signed a peace accord with the government on April 13.

"The children are still with us," he said, without indicating when they would be handed over.

Darfur: Some Arabs Now Fight Alongside Rebels

From The Christian Science Monitor

There was once only one reason for Tusher Mohamed Mahdi, a member of one of Darfur's many Arab tribes, to venture into the mountainous rebel enclave of Jebel Mara: to kill as many non-Arab guerrilla fighters and their supporters as possible.

Now he comes here to take orders.

Mr. Mahdi used to lead a band of 150 Arab fighters, part of the brutal janjaweed militia that fights as the Sudanese government's proxy army in the country's troubled Darfur region, which has seen more than 200,000 people killed and more than 2.5 million displaced since fighting erupted in 2003.

But like a growing number of Arab militia leaders now disenchanted with the Sudanese government, he has thrown in his lot with the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebel force, as Darfur's four-year conflict enters a new chapter.

"In the beginning we were proud to fight because the government was telling us that all this land would belong to us," he says over a glass of sweet, black tea in the small hillside town of Gorolang Baje.

"But later we discovered that would not be true."

Rebel leaders claim that dozens of janjaweed commanders are joining their struggle against the Sudanese government after promises of land, cattle, and money proved worthless.

In Jebel Mara they say 4,000 Arabs have bolstered their forces in the past year.

The deals undermine the simple narrative developed during four years of war: black African tribesmen pitted against an Arab-dominated government and their nomadic Arab allies, the janjaweed.

The truth has always been more complicated.

Many of the Arab tribesman in Darfur suffer from the same lack of development that led the rebels to take up arms in 2003.

In some parts, Arab sheikhs refused government money only to see their authority undermined by younger military commanders who were happy to sign up for war.

At the end of last year a new rebel grouping emerged. The Popular Forces Army, based in neighboring Chad, draws its strength from Arab tribes opposed to the government.

The result is a complex morass of conflicting loyalties and interests, suggesting that a resolution to a conflict that has killed at least 200,000 people remains a distant hope.

In a recent report, the International Crisis Group said that Sudan's governing National Congress Party (NCP) had resorted to "divide and rule tactics."


Sally Chin, one of the report authors, says any solution to Darfur's multilayered conflict would have to take account of their interests.

"Many Arab tribes have always refused to support the NCP policies or take part in the janjaweed militias. For a comprehensive peace in Darfur it is critical that they are also somehow represented in the next round of talks."

Janjaweed commanders have become frequent visitors to rebel villages in the heart of the Jebel Mara mountains, accessible only by donkey.

Mahdi used to head a unit of militias who kept control of the main road into the hills from Nyala, the state capital of South Darfur.

He reels off a list of eight villages that his fighters pillaged.

"We would wait for the government to bomb an area, then we would go in," he says, a government issue AK-47 at his side. "Then our job was to go and loot and burn everything we could."

At first, trunks of cash and ammunition would be distributed by government soldiers before an attack.

But then the money ran out. Then their food.

Disenchanted with the government and rumors that other Arab tribes were being treated better, he led his men to an SLA checkpoint waving a white flag.

They were debriefed and questioned for days, before each being handed a copy of the Koran and welcomed into the SLA.

"It made us feel bad that we had believed the government's lies. We were told that the SLA wanted to kill us and take our animals, that's why we did what we used to do," he says now.

For the past eight months his men have defended the southern slopes of Jebel Mara, making it a buffer against government forces.

He now takes orders from Gen. Elsadig Elzein Rokero, one of the SLA's senior commanders.

General Rokero says he is prepared to welcome anyone into the SLA if they are willing to sign up to the principle of ending Darfur's marginalization.

"It means we do not just represent the Fur – or the [non-Arab] tribes – we represent everybody," he says.

Rokero claims to have some 4,000 Arab militiamen arrayed around the margins of his territory, protecting the civilian population within.

He says the deal has already started to make a difference to the people he is fighting for.

The price of sugar has begun dropping as trucks make the six-hour journey from Nyala to the edge of the Jebel Mara.

And aid agencies can begin bringing food to the isolated people here without fear of hijacking.

That is the real reason for the unlikely alliance, say some Sudan watchers.

"The SLA is able to move food and supplies in along a road that used to be unsafe, while the Arabs can move their animals without fear of SLA harassment," says an aid worker speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

"It's a marriage of convenience not ideology."

Darfur: US Legislators Call for UN Action

From DPA

A US congressional delegation on Monday called on the United Nations to end the "genocide" in Sudan's Darfur region, saying action should be taken immediately because Khartoum has lost sovereignty over its territory. Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress has made it a priority to end the "genocide" in Darfur.

"We cannot wait five, six or seven months for action to take place," Biden told reporters after talks with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and some Security Council members. "There is a need to stem the bleeding."

"We made it very clear that it's the highest priority, in a bipartisan way in the US Congress to end genocide," he said.

He said the Sudanese government has forfeited its sovereignty by allow the killing to take place in Darfur where Khartoum-backed Arab militias had been battling with African rebel groups.

Biden led a four-member bipartisan delegation to the UN to discuss efforts to end the ethnic conflict in Darfur, which since 2003 has left more than 300,000 people dead and made more than 2 million refugees.

The US has been alone in calling the killing genocide. The UN has said the killings in Darfur contained elements of genocide, but stopped short of characterizing it as such following an investigation in 2005.

Biden said Ban and Security Council members have shown a "sense of urgency" in settling the conflict, but offered no timetable for the deployment of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force of more than 23,000 military personnel. He said it would take "some number of months, but less than a year" to deploy the force.

The US currently pays 25 per cent of the UN peacekeeping expenses, which amount to more than 1 billion dollars a year. Biden said he might consider boosting the US contribution up to 27 per cent of the total.

Biden's remarks on Sudan's sovereignty prompted Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem to say the senator had no reason to visit the UN because UN-led diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in Darfur were progressing.

"There's nothing to allow him to come to the UN to talk about Darfur," Abdalhaleem told reporters. He mentioned diplomatic talks and humanitarian services now taking place in Sudan as proof of progress.

Darfur: Rebels Say Pro-Khartoum Forces Killed Five

From AFP

Ethnic minority rebels in Darfur have accused the Sudanese army and allied militias of killing five civilians, one of them in an air raid, a Khartoum newspaper said Monday.

A second civilian was also wounded in Saturday's air strike against Malam Hush in West Darfur, Jar al-Nabi Abdul Karim, a commander of a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement that declined to sign a 2006 peace deal, told the Al-Sahafa daily.

The same day, pro-government militiamen attacked the Jebel Moon and Abusruj areas of West Darfur, killing four civilians, Abdul Karim added.

Abdul Karim's fighters form part of the National Redemption Front, an alliance of rebel groups that rejected the peace agreement signed by the mainstream faction of the SLM in Nigeria last year.

Darfur: British Aid Group Returns to Chaotic Camp

From Reuters

A British humanitarian group has returned to Darfur's largest displaced persons camp after being forced out in December following a coordinated attack on relief groups in which an international aid worker was raped.

The December attack on relief workers in rebel-controlled Gereida was the biggest single assault on the Darfur aid operation, the world's largest, since it began operations in Sudan's war-ravaged west in early 2004.

The attack, in which a staff member of French aid agency Action contre la Faim was raped, led to the immediate evacuation of 71 aid workers and restricted humanitarian aid reaching the region's largest population of war victims.

Only the International Committee of the Red Cross kept its international staff on site.

But medical aid group Merlin said on Monday it had re-opened a primary health care clinic in the camp last week, and was flying in international staff including doctors and nurses for day trips once a week by helicopter to assist local staff.

Internationals were not spending the night in Gereida.

"It really was a horrific attack against the humanitarian community," Linda Edwards, Merlin's country director for Sudan, told Reuters in an interview. "I am still trying to minimise risk. So therefore at this stage we are not prepared to put a full team on the ground the way we worked previously."

The Merlin clinic saw 350 patients on day one, and vaccinated dozens of children against tuberculosis, polio and hepatitis B. The number of daily patients has now risen to 530.

Gereida houses 130,000 people who have fled attacks on villages in Darfur, where the United Nations says 200,000 people have been killed and over 2 million displaced since ethnic and political conflict flared in 2003.

It was not clear who attacked the aid agencies. Sources in the aid community have said they suspected a breakaway faction from rebel leader Minni Arcua Minnawi, who signed a 2006 peace deal with Khartoum but has since lost some sway on the ground.

Aid community sources said while other relief groups were assessing a return to Gereida in the coming months, only ICRC and Merlin had internationals on the ground.

A spokesman for British aid group Oxfam, which had five vehicles stolen and whose compound was fired on during the attack, said his group had no immediate plans to return. Oxfam had provided water to the camp, and maintains a skeleton staff of locals working on hygiene issues.

"Our position has always been that we are open to returning," spokesman Alun McDonald said. But there was not enough improvement in operating conditions to go back just yet.

Edwards said Merlin was currently flying in about 5 staff per week in a World Food Programme helicopter. Staff, including roughly 30 locals based in Gereida, were "as safe as they can be in the context of Darfur".

"We'll be looking gradually ... to see if we can push for another flight, which was the case previously. There were two flights every week. And to see if we can stay overnight, which means that we can increase our services," she said.

She said safety precautions had been increased, and a larger number of guards were on site, although they remained unarmed and carried whistles.

Darfur: France Wants to Bring China, US in Talks

From AFP

France's new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is seeking to bring China, the United States and other countries together for talks on the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, an aid organisation said Monday.

Kouchner, who was appointed on Friday, wants to set up a contact group of nations concerned by the violence in Darfur that the United Nations says has left 200,000 dead and two million displaced since 2003.

"The goal for the coming weeks is to set up a contact group in which there would not only be Americans, British, Germans, Canadians, Chinese and Russians but also the neighbouring countries, including Eritrea and Egypt," said Jacky Mamou, president of the Urgence Darfour non-governmental organisation.

Mamou on Saturday attended a meeting of experts and diplomats called by Kouchner to come up with a strategy for addressing the Darfur crisis.

The new foreign minister hopes to press for action on Darfur at next month's Group of Eight summit in Germany and the European summit in Brussels.

The United States is calling for sanctions to punish Khartoum but has run into opposition from China, the leading customer for Sudanese oil and a key supplier of military arms and equipment to Sudan.

On Sunday, the Sudanese government renewed its opposition to the deployment of UN peacekeepers after talks in Khartoum with China's newly appointed special envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin.

President Nicolas Sarkozy had said the bloodshed in Darfur is "unacceptable" and called during his campaign for action to halt the violence.

Darfur: Olympics Are China's 'Vulnerable Spot'

From DPA

The humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur has put China in a vexing position. Though Chinese leaders have done a turnaround and are pressing Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to accept United Nations peacekeeping troops in the violence-racked region, the worldwide anti-China campaign seems to be gaining steam. By calling for a boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, an alliance of Hollywood personalities and politicians has hit China's "vulnerable spot," a diplomat noted.

"There is a handful of people who are trying to politicise the Olympic Games," promptly protested China's new foreign minister, Yang Jiechi. "This is against the spirit of the Games."

Yang said that various levels of the Chinese government were in close touch with all parties to the conflict in a bid to find a solution.

A high-ranking official emphasised that Beijing had been working for months to persuade Bashir to change his mind. The official said that Chinese President Hu Jintao had had two "very long conversations" with his Sudanese counterpart -- one last February in Khartoum, the other during the China-Africa summit in Beijing in November 2006.

Senior Chinese official Zhai Jun held further talks with Bashir in April and visited refugee camps in Darfur for the first time.

The Beijing government has appointed a special envoy to focus on Darfur and backs the proposed deployment of 20,000 UN peacekeepers to the region. It plans to contribute 275 soldiers from an engineering unit to a 3,000-strong UN vanguard meant to bolster the 7,000 overstretched soldiers from the African Union who are already in Darfur.

Chinese pressure probably helped persuade Bashir to accept the 3,000 UN personnel, but he continues to oppose the full 20,000-man force. Britain's Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, has defended China against criticism. "Actually, China has played really quite a positive role," she commented.

However, diplomats say that China underestimated the extent of the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, and the world's indignation, for far too long. Some 200,000 people, mostly non-Arabs, have been killed and 2.2 million displaced in attacks by government-backed Arab militias.

China is still seen as part of the problem because it used its veto power in the UN Security Council in 2005 to block sanctions against Sudan. Observers say that China also played a dubious role in 2006. In light of China's energy interests in Sudan -- Sudan exports much of its oil to China -- China's critics saw a dirty deal. Its arms exports to Sudan raised international ire further.

[edit]

Beijing is alarmed. It feels that it is being treated unfairly, and that its turnaround on Darfur has not received adequate attention. In China's foreign ministry there is palpable frustration over the degree of Beijing's clout with Bashir -- it is less than had been generally thought -- and its inability to solve the problem.

"There is a lot of China-bashing in the West," said the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, who in January praised China's "positive role." He told a US Senate panel that China's "subtle diplomacy" had supplemented, not undermined, the policy of sanctions against Sudan.

Natsios pointed out that Sudanese rebels were fighting each other now, too. The government has lost control of large parts of Darfur, he said. "It's anarchy."

Darfur: Rebels Say Government Shells Water Station

From Reuters

Darfur rebels accused the Sudanese government of bombing a Darfur water station on Saturday and said militiamen and soldiers shot dead four people in a village elsewhere in the country's war-ravaged west.

A Sudanese army spokesman denied the military had been involved in any incident in either place. A spokesman for African Union peacekeepers in Darfur said he was checking the report.

Jar el-Neby Abdel Karim, commander of a breakaway arm of the Sudan Liberation Movement that is not a signatory to a 2006 peace accord, said a government Antonov plane had dropped around 15 shells near a water station in Malam al-Hoj, about 150 km (93 miles) south of el-Fasher.

"They fired on civilians. One citizen was killed and four were wounded," he said, speaking to Reuters via satellite phone from Darfur.

Abdel Karim said that Janjaweed militia men and government troops in 12 vehicles and riding horses and camels had also attacked a village in West Darfur earlier in the day, killing four people in Abu Surouj south of Jebel Moon.

The Sudanese army spokesman dismissed reports of an attack near Jebel Moon: "The Sudanese military conducted ordinary patrols, but there were no clashes."

He said the incident could have been a tribal clash, and that the rebels were wrongly blaming the government. He also denied that a government plane had shelled the Malam area.

Darfur: Sudanese Police Attack On Aid Workers Tests U.N. Chief's Diplomacy

From the Washington Post

On Jan. 19, a group of 20 international aid workers and peacekeepers celebrated their day off with an afternoon of dining, drinking and dancing at the guesthouse of the private relief agency, the American Refugee Committee, in the town of Nyala, Darfur.

The outing ended in the early evening when Sudanese police and security agents broke into the house, videotaped the attendees -- which included five U.N. workers, representatives of six U.S. and British aid agencies, and African Union peacekeepers -- and then beat them with batons and rifle butts and sexually assaulted at least one female U.N. worker. Locals cheered from the street, and some joined in the assault.

The diners were jailed, subjected to further beatings and accused of illegally consuming alcohol and engaging in immoral behavior, citing the discovery of a Sudanese woman found alone in a room with a man. Those charges were reduced or dropped, but the hosts and a handful of other aid workers were each fined about $100 and charged with failing to obtain a permit to hold a gathering.

The episode -- drawn from interviews and confidential written accounts from U.N. officials and aid workers -- has become a test of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's efforts to use quiet diplomacy with Sudan. Ban, who has never spoken publicly about the case, called the attack "unacceptable" in a private letter to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and urged him to ensure that police were held accountable. But Ban's attempt to parlay his new relationship with Bashir -- cultivated during a series of talks over U.N.-brokered peacekeeping -- has yielded little progress in this case.

Bashir last month dismissed Ban's appeal, warning in a confidential letter that U.N. staff members would be held accountable for violating Sudanese laws and suggesting that they receive special training in "conduct and discipline" to ensure they obey those laws. "Accordingly, persons working in Sudan, regardless of their status or assignments, are expected to observe and respect the customary laws of the communities in which they serve."

Bashir and other Sudanese officials have said the episode underscores how foreign aid workers trample on Sudan's Islamic traditions, and Sudanese religious leaders have organized demonstrations to protest the outsiders' behavior.

For the United Nations, the incident marked the most flagrant act of violence by government forces against international personnel in Darfur. A U.N. board of inquiry into the incident -- which involved relief workers from Oxfam International, World Vision International and the International Rescue Committee -- recently concluded that Sudan violated provisions of the status of forces agreement governing the U.N. presence in Sudan.

"The humanitarian community feels, rightly, doubly victimized in this incident. Those concerned were not only assaulted, but then themselves charged with a crime," John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told the U.N. Security Council last month. "Those who have come to help the population are now themselves targets."

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when Darfurian rebels took up arms against the Islamic government, claiming that they represented the region's disadvantaged black villagers. In response, Khartoum armed and organized Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, and supported a bloody counterinsurgency that led to the destruction of hundreds of villages, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the flight of more than 2.5 million from their homes.

Conditions improved in 2004 after relief workers flooded into Darfur, establishing a massive aid operation that currently costs $800 million a year. Today, more than 13,000 relief workers, including nearly 900 foreigners, deliver food, medicine and other life-saving services to more than 3 million people.

But security has deteriorated sharply since May 2006, when Khartoum and one of Darfur's chief rebel factions, the Sudan Liberation Army, signed the Darfur Peace Accord -- a pact that was rejected by several rebel factions and most of Darfur's population, and which led to the splintering of Darfurian rebel groups.

The Nyala incident occurred at a time when attacks against foreigner aid workers are soaring in Darfur. Relief workers have suffered nearly daily attacks, including carjackings and assaults that have left more than 13 dead over the past year and made huge swaths of Darfur off limits for aid workers. Last month, armed groups hijacked 16 humanitarian vehicles, attacked eight humanitarian compounds, ambushed and looted seven relief convoys, and shot four aid workers.

The British relief agency Oxfam International, France's Action Against Hunger and the U.N. World Food Program withdrew in December from Darfur's largest camp for displaced persons, in Gereida, after armed groups attacked six humanitarian compounds on Dec. 18, stealing vehicles, cash and communications equipment, subjecting aid workers to beatings and mock executions, and raping one woman. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only international aid organization remaining in the camp, where 130,000 people are settled.

"It is getting to the point now where the humanitarian aid response is at risk of breaking down," said Alun McDonald, a Khartoum-based spokesman for the British aid agency Oxfam International. "We used to know who to do deal with; we used to know who to phone up we were coming through their areas. Now we don't know."

Some aid workers have expressed concern that the U.N. leadership has not confronted the Sudanese government more forcefully. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, made little fuss about Sudan's expulsion in December of former U.N. Special Representative Jan Pronk. A replacement has not been named.

The United Nations has not acknowledged Sudan's expulsion of the three other U.N. officials over the past six months, including the top-ranking security official who was given 48 hours to leave the country after Sudanese officials protested his circulation of a memo warning aid workers of possible al-Qaeda attacks.

U.N. officials say that while Ban has not gone public, he has been uncommonly tough with Bashir in private. In his confidential Feb. 23 letter to Bashir, Ban expressed "deep concern" over the January attack. "I view this incident as serious and unacceptable and I trust that your government will ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable."

Ban urged Bashir to pledge "his own personal support" to ensure cooperation with a U.N. board of inquiry looking into the incident. He also pressed Bashir to order a judicial review of the case in Khartoum to "send the message that your government will not tolerate attacks against relief workers by its own officials or anyone else."

In his reply, Bashir made no mention of the police abuses and told Ban to drop the matter. "I suggest that episodes of similar nature be tackled at the appropriate administrative level so that you and I devote our time and energies to reinvigorate the peace process."

Darfur: China Unlikely to Bow to Critics

From AFP

China has signalled during a week of high-level diplomatic wrangling over the Darfur crisis that it is unlikely to bend to global pressure and change its much-criticised policies on Sudan.

Beijing has been showered with international condemnation over its support for the Khartoum government, accused of shielding Sudan from sanctions and abetting genocide in Darfur.

The United Nations says more than 200 000 people have been killed and two million displaced in the fighting in Darfur.

Khartoum says only 9 000 people have died.

On Thursday United States President George Bush reiterated his support for a new UN resolution on Darfur and the imposition of sanctions to force Khartoum to open its door to United Nations troops.

But Chinese leaders including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and newly installed Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi have resisted pressure to shift Beijing's policy of opposition to UN sanctions.

"We hope that this issue will be resolved properly through dialogue and negotiation," Yang said on Friday.

"On the Darfur issue in Sudan, the position of the Chinese government is consistent and well known."

On Sunday, the Sudanese government renewed its opposition to the deployment of UN peacekeepers after talks in Khartoum with China's newly appointed special envoy on Darfur, Liu Guijin.

The seasoned diplomat was named as envoy on May 10, shortly after 100 US lawmakers signed a letter calling on Chinese President Hu Jintao to take immediate action to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

"The international community is stepping up to its responsibilities, but unless China does its part to ensure that the government of Sudan accepts the best and most reasonable path to peace, history will judge your government as having bank-rolled a genocide," the letter to Hu read.

The lawmakers' warning are echoed by activists such as Sudan's Ali Askouri, who say that the Khartoum regime has no internal support and has been propped up by China since 2000.

"The first country to become a Chinese colony is Sudan," said Askouri, who head the Piankhi Research group and represents communities displaced by the China-financed Merowe dam project, the biggest hydropower project in Africa.

"This is because of the oil, the need for oil for their own internal security," he added at a press event in Beijing last week.

Sudan sells more that 50% of its oil output to China, which openly admits having strong military ties with Khartoum.

Darfur: Sudan Again Rejects UN-AU Force

From AFP

The Sudanese government renewed its opposition to a proposed 20,000-strong hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force for Darfur after talks with a visiting Chinese envoy Sunday.

"The government has agreed on a combined operation and not joint forces for containing the crisis in Darfur," said presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmed after the talks with Liu Guijin, the Chinese foreign ministry's Africa director.

"The government also agreed to the UN heavy support package to the African Union to help resolve the conflict," Ahmed added, referring to UN plans to provide logistical support to the overstretched 7,000-strong African Union force currently in place in Darfur.

A three-phase plan floated last year by then UN chief Kofi Annan is supposed to culminate in the deployment of UN peacekeepers to bolster the embattled African force in Darfur, a region the size of France.

But Khartoum has accepted only the first two stages of the plan, accusing the Western powers of plotting to recolonize the country under the guise of the UN mission.

Analysts say the Sudanese government is worried that a robust UN force might lead to the detention of senior officials who have been implicated in human rights abuses in Darfur.

CAR/Chad/Darfur: AU Sends Mediators to Ease Tensions

From AFP

Mediators from the African Union are to visit Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) to try to ease tensions created by the Darfur crisis, an AU statement said Sunday.

The statement said six envoys would this week visit the Sudan and its two western neighbours to "undertake a comprehensive assessment of the situation on the ground."

"The mission is also tasked to identify the obstacles impeding the implementation of the agreements signed by Chad and the Sudan ... in order to make recommendations that would lead to a durable solution to the problems of the region," it added.

Sudan and Chad accuse each other of supporting rebel forces in their respective territories amid international fears that the continuing strife in Darfur will spill over into Chad and ignite a regional war.

Darfur: U.N. Envoy Says Negotiations Vital

From AP

The international community must soon find a political solution to the conflict in Darfur or risk submerging the region in a "new generation of conflict," the U.N. special envoy for Darfur said Friday.

"The next few months are a period where we have to have a massive effort to find a political solution," Eliasson told reporters.

The Darfur conflict began when members of Darfur‘s ethnic African tribes rebelled against what they consider decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the janjaweed, that has committed many of the conflict‘s atrocities — a charge they deny.

"If we don‘t deal with the Darfur situation, this other activity will turn into a new problem, which is beyond the negotiation format we are creating," Eliasson said.

First, he said, all previous peace initiatives should be consolidated, with the United Nations and the African Union taking the lead.

The third phase would be negotiations between the government and the rebels. Eliasson said that he expected a cease-fire to accompany the beginning of negotiations.

"The patience of the international community, particularly the United States, is running out," Khalilzad said. "We are considering our own sanctions, but also working with others towards international sanctions to bring about a change in policy and more cooperation on the ground from the Sudanese government."

Darfur: AU, Former Rebels Strike Deal to Ease Tensions

From AFP

The African Union and a former Sudanese rebel group on Friday struck a deal to ease tensions after a clash last month in the troubled region of Darfur that killed eight people, the AU said.

The AU, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) of Minni Minnawi and local tribesmen "agreed to put the welfare and security of the local Um Barro inhabitants first", the AU mission in Sudan said.

In the April 1 clash at Um Barro village in North Darfur armed men attacked AU troops at a watering point, killing five Senegalese soldiers. Three assailants also reportedly died.

The AU did not point the finger for the attack but said it took place in an area controlled by the SLM. The Senegalese army explicitly blamed the group.

Hassan Alieu Gibril, deputy head of the AU mission, led a high-level delegation to Um Barro for the talks with SLA representatives and tribal leaders.

The negotiations focused on water rights and water management in Um Barro and resuming AU patrols and military escorts in and around Um Barro, the AU said in a statement.

"The AU is to resume peacekeeping patrols of Um Barro and the surrounding area following a 72-hour grace period to allow tribal leaders and SLA representatives time to inform local stakeholders of the agreement," it said.

The three sides agreed that an independent board of inquiry be set up to investigate the incident and advise on compensation to be paid to families of the dead. They also agreed the AU force would work with contractors and local partners to ensure water resources are shared fairly. The AU will try to establish a new water point for the villages around Um Barro.

Darfur: Biden to Meet Secretary General

From Sudan Tribune

Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic presidential candidate, will meet with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on Monday to discuss progress in resolving the conflict in Darfur.

Biden has been one of the most outspoken US lawmakers in urging the US administration intervention in Darfur. He called last April for the use of military force to end the suffering in Darfur.

Last month Biden summoned Andrew Natsios, President Bush’s Special envoy to Sudan to testify before the committee on the Darfur crisis. Natsios came under fire from Biden and other US lawmakers who expressed impatience with lack of progress in Darfur.

Biden told Natsios during the hearing that “it’s time to put force on the table and use it [in Darfur]”. He added that senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could "radically change the situation on the ground now."

The US has threatened Sudan with a ‘Plan B’ if it doesn’t agree to the proposed deployment of a "hybrid" force of 20,000 United Nations and AU peacekeepers and police officers. However the US has held off on sanctions at the request of the UN Secretary General.

Last week the US has signaled its impatience with the fruitless diplomacy of the UN Secretary General. US officials recently revealed to Reuters that the White House may proceed with sanctions as very soon pending a decision from President Bush.

Darfur: Investors Band Together to Ratchet Up Pressure

From Kathy Kristof

Adam Sterling wants individual investors to know that they are a powerful force — and they can use that power to help stop genocide halfway across the world in the Sudanese region of Darfur.

Sterling believes that if American investors pull their money from companies that fund the Sudanese government, that government will be forced to curtail atrocities by its forces and allied militias in their fight against Darfur rebels. In four years of conflict, more than 200,000 villagers in the region have died and more than 2.5 million have fled their homes, the United Nations says.

"Divestment has been the one real action that the government of Sudan has responded to," said Sterling, director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force in Washington. "Genocide is expensive. The Sudanese government relies heavily on foreign investment to fund its military and the janjaweed militias."

In simple terms, divestment refers to getting rid of investments in companies and mutual funds that do business with an offending government. To be sure, no one individual investor is likely to have enough money invested in Sudanese firms — or in companies doing business in Sudan — to have an effect. But millions of investors acting in concert might.

"People are finally beginning to realize that acting as part of a group can be really powerful," said Amy Domini, president of Domini Social Investments, a family of mutual funds intended to be socially responsible.

The Sudan divestment campaign resembles an effort decades ago to press South Africa to give up its practice of apartheid, which stripped economic and legal rights from the country's black majority. That divestment bid isolated South Africa economically, and in the early 1990s the government ended apartheid.

The South African divestment effort took about 15 years to be successful, gaining steam as some large institutional investors in the U.S. pulled funds from the country's economy.

The anti-Sudan movement is already well under way. Forty-two colleges and universities and eight states have started to sell their Sudan-related investments. An additional 17 states are considering doing so. The nonprofit Genocide Intervention Network is attempting to get individual investors on board to stoke up the heat on mutual fund companies.

Two things make the Darfur effort different from the movement to pressure South Africa, Domini said.

Sudan: Growing Anger Over Elusive Peace Dividend

From IRIN

Anthony Bol Madut, governor of Warrap state in Southern Sudan, could not hide his frustration when he met representatives of European donors on a visit to the remote poverty-stricken region.

"People are dying of cholera in Gogrial and we do not even have roads to take medicines to them," said Madut, emphasising what he considers the neglect of Southern Sudan since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The accord formally ended civil war between the northern-based Sudanese government and former southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

Donors and the Sudanese government had promised to make available considerable resources to rebuild the south. There is, however, widespread anger in the region as people wait to reap what appears to be an elusive peace dividend.

To compound the situation, thousands of former refugees and internally displaced people are flocking to the south to join communities ravaged by poverty and lacking basic social services.

"This is potentially one of the biggest repatriation/return movements Africa would have seen in recent years," said Dennis McNamara, special adviser on internal displacement to the United Nations emergency coordinator. "Hundreds of thousands of people have gone back both spontaneously and some with the assistance of agencies like the United Nations, IOM [International Organization for Migration] and other NGOs."

Martin Riech, 14, who returned to Tarkwen village in Western Bahr el-Ghazal state from another county in the same state, where his family sought refuge from war in the 1990s, is so frustrated he sees no point in attending school regularly.

"The school is just a shack divided into two rooms," he said. "There is only one teacher and I have to walk two hours to get there." His family moved from Manyang county, where, he says, he and his two sisters went to a proper school.

"These people are voting with their feet," McNamara added. "What we are very concerned about is that hundreds of thousands of people are going back, in most cases to areas of Southern Sudan that have terrible problems and lack services for the existing populations.

"There are often inadequate water points, inadequate schooling and medical support. There is no real plan for economic development and livelihoods being put in place."

Tong Mayien, 48, his wife Achan and their two toddlers looked bewildered after climbing down from one of the lorries hired by IOM to bring them from Marial Ajit internally displaced people’s camp in Wau town to Kuajok from where they would find their way to their village.

"We have not yet built a home, but my sister who returned earlier has promised to accommodate us," Mayien told IRIN in Kuajok. "We have land and we have been promised farming tools. If I don’t receive the tools, I will go and find some work in the town to raise money to buy my own."

Darfur: GI-Net News

The most recent Darfur news round-up is available from Genocide Intervention Network

A report released from Amnesty International found "the bulk" of arms transferred to Sudan is from Chinese and Russian sources, despite a UN arms embargo on Sudan. The report was immediately rejected by both China and Russia; the latter flatly denied Russian weapons were being sold to Sudan. While the US State Department said each country was responsible for the characterization of its own relationship with Sudan, he advised an "abundance of caution" with regard to any trade relationship with Sudan that might involve the sale of weapons. The UN criticized the government of Sudan for its recent increase of "indiscriminate" aerial bombing campaigns in north Darfur, although the report neglected to mention the specific numbers of bombings that have occurred within the past few weeks.

The Sudanese government rejected handing over two suspects for whom the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants, believing the court has no jurisdiction over the matter. In an attempt to further obstruct ICC trials, the government sentenced two soldiers, both age 16, to death by hanging for their involvement in alleged war crimes. The ICC is prevented by its charter from sending prosecutors unless the country has proven unwilling or unable to conduct its own trials. ICC officials recently toured refugee camps in eastern Chad in efforts to encourage the victims to participate in the impending trials. Sudan and Chad signed a fifth reconciliation deal in Saudi-brokered peace talks, promising to stop arming and supporting rebel factions in each other's territory. The agreement is nearly identical to one signed in Libya last month that has yielded no results.

Several US senators issued a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging China to utilize its leverage to pressure Khartoum to honor its commitments to accept additional peacekeeping contingents and to withdraw its troops from Darfur. This was followed by a resolution demanding China "be held accountable" for its actions, but stopping short of calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. China has responded to pressure from human rights groups by appointing a Special Envoy to Africa, Liu Guijin, whose first priority will be to address the Darfur crisis.

Uganda: Victims Ask LRA "Why Kill Us?"

From Reuters"

Poking out of northern Uganda's tangled bush and tall elephant grass, a crucifix of two welded metal poles painted white marks a mass grave.

On the stone slab below it, an epitaph in the local Acholi language: "Here lie 28 people who were killed on August 19th, 1986." It does not say how.

More than 20 years of civil war between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have sent tens of thousands of people to their graves.

Most were massacred by marauding rebels notorious for such atrocities as beating villagers to death, hacking body parts off survivors and fire-bombing thatched huts with their occupants still inside.

Locals say this grave is different.

"This was a massacre by government soldiers," said Ijeren Lakob, 56, as she gazed over the tombstone to a dark row of jagged hills beyond.

Residents said the grave contained the bodies of northerners accused of plotting an uprising against President Yoweri Museveni, whose southern rebels took power in a coup in 1986.

"They rounded up the men then shot them in the head. Everyone else ran. We came back after some time, they were skeletons," Lakob said, adding that villagers gathered up the bones and buried them.

The government and rebels are due to resume talks in south Sudan this month after signing a second part of a multi-stage deal aimed at ending one of Africa's longest conflicts.

Some think this massacre near what is now Namakora camp was a trigger for a war that uprooted nearly two million people.

"After Namakora, people felt it was better to die fighting than wait to picked up and killed," said Paul Omach, a northern academic who teaches politics at Kampala's Makerere university.

Two decades later, the movement that started as a popular uprising has made civilians its victims, killing thousands.

"(LRA leader Joseph) Kony has murdered many more than the government ever did," said Namakora camp resident Obadia Obol, 75, adding that the LRA killed many members of her own family.

Obol said she remembered the rebels storming her village and spraying bystanders with bullets.

"How can they be defending us when they are killing people and cutting ears off?" she asked. "If you want to overthrow the government, why fight us?"

Uganda: Bombs After War

From Reuters

In his new community of half-built mud huts and uncultivated soil in northern Uganda's Gulu district, David Otto walks by his house when he spots another bomb lying in the dirt.

"This is the fourth one this week," says the 32-year-old father of five, before casually digging out the mangled mortar and carrying it into the bush away from his home.

"We came here to start again, but we've found dozens of these. Sometimes we hit them with ploughs -- they could easily explode. How can you get over a war with these bombs everywhere?"

When Otto set out with his 2,000-strong community -- leaving behind more than a million Ugandans still living in camps, too scared of a resumption of war to move on -- he hoped he was sharing in the first steps to rebuild and heal his country.

But as the government urges the displaced to trust peace talks that began last July and aim to end 21 years of civil war, it is the literal remains of the conflict that have left many terrified for the lives of their families.

"Maybe the war has finished for good, I don't know, but this is still a battlefield down here," Otto says, pointing at the ground where his children play barefoot and curious.

Aid workers say hundreds more bombs lie in wait, scattered by a war pitting government forces against Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and forcibly recruiting thousands of children.

Only about 20 percent of the uprooted villagers have left the squalid, sprawling camps to begin resettling their land.

For Otto, the near-daily deadly reminders pulled from the earth have left the atrocities of one of Africa's longest and most brutal wars fresh in his mind.

"So many of us lost loved ones. There might be peace now, but there is still danger."

Somalia: Killing of Peacekeepers Brings Calls for Troop Withdrawal

From VOA

In Uganda, the deaths of four peacekeepers in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, this week have prompted calls for President Yoweri Museveni to withdraw his military troops from the African Union mission. As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, the Ugandan government is sending mixed signals about how long it intends to remain committed to efforts to stabilize Somalia.

Weeks before a contingent of about 1,400 Ugandan soldiers arrived in Mogadishu in early March, many Ugandans had openly questioned the wisdom of sending their troops to Somalia, which has been mired in civil war for nearly 16 years.

But media reports say since four peacekeepers were killed and five more wounded in a roadside bombing Wednesday, public opinion, especially in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has moved sharply against keeping the troops in Somalia longer than the six-month mandate.

The reports say many Ugandans are concerned that the African Union mission in Somalia is diverting money, manpower, and resources away from efforts to resolve conflicts at home, including the long-running civil war against Lord's Resistance Army rebels in the north of the country.

There is also a growing belief in Uganda that President Yoweri Museveni pushed for a rapid deployment of troops largely to appease the United States.

After Ethiopian-led forces defeated Somalia's Islamic Courts Union in late December, Washington led international efforts to raise an 8,000-member peacekeeping force to protect Somalia's fragile secular interim government and to train its security forces.

Aggrey Awori is a Ugandan political analyst and an adviser to President Museveni. He says Uganda sent troops to Somalia because it is the duty of African nations to help one another in times of crisis.

"Anybody knows that once you take on a military mission, death is always facing you," he said. "What has happened is very unfortunate [but] it should not change or move us from our original course. We did not go to Somalia on a bilateral basis, between Mogadishu and Kampala. It was an African Union commitment. Somalia is an African country. So, we are expecting other colleagues in the organization to answer the call."

But ordinary Ugandans complain about the lack of action by other African Union member states.

Despite pledges from several other African countries, including Nigeria, Malawi, and Burundi, to send troops to Somalia, none have yet been deployed.

In another blow to Uganda, the Addis Ababa-based African Union acknowledged earlier this week that despite receiving more than $10 million from the European Union to fund peacekeeping missions, the organization still does not have enough money to meet the needs of the mission in Somalia.

Ugandan Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga announced last Saturday that peacekeepers from his country would withdraw from Somalia when their mandate ends in September. The minister says he is expecting a U.N. peacekeeping force to take over the mission.

It is not clear whether the minister was speaking on behalf of President Museveni, who had earlier warned the United Nations to stay out of Somalia and vowed to keep Ugandan troops in Somalia until the country was stabilized.

DRC: At Least 2 Dead, 20 Wounded in Rebel Ambush

From Reuters

Suspected Rwandan rebels killed at least two people and wounded 20 others in an attack in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, in the latest sign that U.N.-backed peace efforts are faltering.

The ambush on a civilian truck in the troubled North Kivu province was believed to have been carried out by elements of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu-dominated Rwandan rebel movement based in eastern Congo, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

It took place near the town of Katwiguru, around 100 km (60 miles) north of the provincial capital, Goma.

"Among the passengers apparently were two (government soldiers). One was killed. The other was injured," Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, spokeswoman for Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission in North Kivu, told Reuters.

One civilian was also killed. At least three of the injured transported to a nearby hospital were in grave condition, a local officials said.

"We had information of attempted attacks by FDLR along the same axis the day before," Van Den Wildenberg said, adding that one police officer was killed and another was injured during efforts to secure the road on Friday.

"So far we have confirmed a total of three confirmed killed, and it may be more," she said, adding U.N. peacekeepers were stepping up patrols in the area.

Darfur: We Know Their Names

From ENOUGH

The U.S. has issued so many hollow threats over the past three years that senior NCP officials will dismiss even a clear and direct warning from the President of the United States. President Bush must immediately end the dangerous state of impunity that fuels continued state-sponsored violence in Darfur by punishing those same NCP officials.

Using its current chairmanship of the UN Security Council, the U.S. should propose a new list of names for targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans. The administration’s current Plan B will impose sanctions on three individuals. However, the proposed targets do not include three of the people most responsible for what the administration terms genocide: Assistant to the President Nafie Ali Nafie; Director of National Intelligence Salah Abdallah Abu Digin (AKA Salah Gosh); and Minster of Defense Major General Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein.

Salah Gosh and Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein have already been named by the UN Panel of Experts charged with investigating crimes against humanity in Darfur. The Panel found that both men had “command responsibility” for the atrocities committed by the multiple Sudanese security services. Hussein was found responsible for “coordination operations between entities within the Sudanese Armed Forces and militia groups” – code language for orchestrating Janjaweed attacks on civilians.

The principal policymaker for Sudan’s national security and intelligence affairs, Nafie Ali Nafie continues to advocate a military solution in Darfur. His latest policy is to reward the Janjaweed for their crimes in Darfur by forcibly installing his Arab allies into positions of traditional power and resettling Arabs on non-Arab land, fundamentally altering the demography of Darfur and finalizing a policy of ethnic cleansing.

If we know who is responsible, why is the Bush administration afraid to punish those responsible for what it calls genocide?

ENOUGH urges activists to dial 1-800-Genocide to connect directly to the White House, tell President Bush that the time for a Plan B with teeth is now, and demand that Nafie Ali Nafie, Salah Gosh, and Adbel Rahim Mohamed Hussein be punished for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Darfur: AU Patrols to Resume in Troubled Village

From Reuters

African Union peacekeepers in Sudan will resume patrols in a Darfur village where five Senegalese soldiers were killed last month in the deadliest single attack on the force since its 2004 deployment, AU officials said on Friday.

The daily patrols -- to guard women collecting firewood around Um Barro village and to escort African Union fuel convoys in the area -- will resume on Sunday, they said.

"Negotiations culminated in a consensus that the AU is to resume its peacekeeping patrols of Um Barro and the surrounding area following a 72-hour grace period," an African Union statement said. The grace period began on Thursday.

[edit]

The African Union suspended patrols near Um Barro last month after gunmen killed the peacekeepers as they guarded a water point near the Chadian border. Three gunmen were also killed.

The attack took place in an area of North Darfur controlled by forces loyal to the former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement. Since the attack, African Union soldiers posted nearby had been largely confined to their camp, officials said.

The killings reinforced fears that violence could undermine the world's biggest humanitarian effort as the stalemate over a large U.N. Darfur deployment drags on. Some 17 AU personnel have been killed in Darfur since late 2004, including seven in April.

[edit]

The African Union said the agreement to resume operations around Um Barro followed talks with the former rebel SLM and local tribesmen aimed at ending "weeks of tension" following the April 1 attack.

Senegal has blamed members of an SLM faction that signed a 2006 peace deal with the government for the attack. That faction, headed by Minni Arcua Minnawi, has vehemently denied any involvement.

The African Union said the sides had agreed to form an independent commission to investigate the deaths that would include tribal leaders and representatives from the African Union and the SLM. The commission would decide what, if any, compensation was due, and to whom.

The African Union was also conducting its own investigation.

Under the deal, the African Union would also look into establishing a new water point that could serve Um Barro and surrounding villages to alleviate a water shortage. It would also try to help ensure that water resources were well-managed.

An AU statement said that tribal leaders and the SLM had asked that the AU also "continue to extend medical services and supplies to the local community", and the African Union said its humanitarian operations would continue uninterrupted.

Chad: Displaced Wait for Return to Burnt Village

From VOA

Over the past year in eastern Chad, dozens of communities have fled fighting between rebel groups and Janjaweed militias based in Sudan. The scorched landscape along the remote far east, along the border with Sudan, is now mostly empty after thousands of Chadians fled the constant border attacks and pillaging. Voice of America reporter Phuong Tran talked to villagers from Bandala who escaped their burning homes six months ago and are now waiting to return safely.

At a temporary camp in Habile, 85 kilometers from Chad's border with Sudan, sisters Adama and Fatouma talk about returning home. But they say they are afraid they may not be able to recognize it when they get there.

Adama, the younger sister, says she remembers the mango, guava and tamarind trees around their house, but knows they are no longer there.

Her older sister Fatouma, a mother of seven, says when suspected Janjaweed militia attacked and burned their village of about 700 people, the fighters took even the fruits from the earth. The sisters say they lost their mother in the attacks, and that they will not go back, for now, because of the Janjaweed.

In Darfur, western Sudan, the conflict between rebels and the Janjaweed has killed some 200-thousand people and displaced about two point five million others since 2003, with many from Darfur seeking refuge in Chad. Janjaweed militia, said to be supported by Sudan's government, have fought against rebels on both sides of the Chad- Sudan border, and are blamed for most attacks on civilians and torched villages. Chad and Sudan have repeatedly accused each other of supporting the other country's rebel movements and there have been many cross border raids.

Djima Barka Kamis has been the village chief of Bandala since 1963. The 60-year-old chief describes what he remembers from six months ago. Through a translator, he says, "The Janjaweed attacked from east to west with their weapons. How could we have protected our village with only our bare hands? And we are still not safe here. They came after us here four months ago."

At the end of last year, fighting among different armed groups partially burned down Habile, where the camp is located.

Chief Kamis says, "Even here, we are still not safe. Women are not able to leave this area because they can be raped."

Darfur: Sudan Forces Implicated in Attacks That Killed More Than 100

Report available here.

From the AP

Sudanese security forces took part in a series of attacks on villages in the Darfur region in which more than 100 people, including civilians, were killed, according to a U.N. report Friday.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said members of the country's Border Intelligence Guards participated in eight raids carried out by the Rizeigat Abbala tribal group against members of the rival Tarjum tribe.

The 10-page report said witnesses described hundreds of heavily armed men, mostly dressed in uniform, attacking the Tarjum villages of Moharjiraya-Moraya, Moharjiraya-Ajami, Missik, Mordade, Giderke, Maramadi, Amar Jadeed and Morayajengay with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades between Jan. 6 and March 31.

Villagers responded by fighting back, killing and wounding some of the attackers, the report said, adding that military identification cards belonging to Sudan's Border Intelligence Guards, an interior ministry unit known as the Popular Police, and the army's Division of Intelligence and Security were found after the attacks.

"Despite clear and consistent evidence gathered between January and March 2007 that members of government security forces were involved in the attacks, the government did not take effective action to prevent the attacks, control members of its security forces and use of its equipment, pursue the attackers or intervene to protect civilians," the report said.

It said that while no evidence was found that the attackers were operating under the direct command of the government, Khartoum had a duty under international human rights law to investigate the incidents and act to protect its civilians from attacks.

The report, which was compiled by U.N. officials working in Sudan, said the motive for the attacks was control of agricultural and grazing land in a region close to the provincial capital Nyala, about 950 kilometers (600 miles) southwest of Khartoum.

From Reuters

The United Nations human rights office on Friday accused Sudanese security forces of killing more than 100 people in indiscriminate machine gun attacks on villages in South Darfur over a three-month period.

In a report covering January-March, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called on the government to carry out an independent investigation into the attacks near Nyala.

"In all instances, witnesses described hundreds of heavily armed attackers, many of who were identified as Border Intelligence personnel," the report said, citing "consistent" testimony gathered by U.N. human rights officers.

"During all the incidents, attackers fired indiscriminately from the outskirts of the settlements with heavy machine guns and rocket propelled grenades, before entering the settlements and shooting men," it said.

The border intelligence guards, often recruited from the local population, are part of a secretive unit "known to be under the control of Military Intelligence," the report said.

It said some attackers, described as wearing green or beige khaki uniforms, had left behind military identification cards. But the U.N. team had "not found evidence that the attackers were operating under the direct command of the government."

[edit]

The latest violence, in an area known as Bulbul, stemmed from a long-simmering land dispute between two ethnic Arab groups, the Rizeigat Abbala and Tarjum, according to the 10-page U.N. report. It said Sudanese forces had sided with the Rizeigat Abbala in carrying out the attacks on Tarjum villages.

"This is not the first dispute between members of these groups, however, what is particularly striking is the intensity of the fighting, the high number of casualties, and in particular, the involvement of Sudanese security personnel, weapons and vehicles' in the attacks on villages," it said.

The most deadly attack had come on March 31 when more than 60 people from the Tarjum village of Morayajengay were killed.

Attackers had also systematically looted the villages, particularly for livestock, before burning down the settlements.

"The Office is seriously concerned that to date no effective action has been taken by the government to prevent the attacks or bring the perpetrators to justice," the U.N. report said.

An independent investigation should "collect evidence to identify and prosecute those found to be responsible for the attacks as well as those who failed to prevent the attacks and protect the civilian population", it said.

Sudanese authorities had received the report, according to U.N. human rights spokesman Yvon Edoumou. "They are fully aware of its contents and recommendations," he told a news briefing.

Darfur: Linking Olympics to Genocide Will Fail

From the AP

Attempts to politicize Beijing's Olympic Games next year by linking them to the Darfur crisis in Sudan or other issues are doomed to fail, China's Foreign Minister warned Friday.

"There are a handful of people who are trying to politicize the Olympic Games," Yang Jiechi said at a press briefing with visiting British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. "Their objectives ... will never be attained."

China's leadership has been widely criticized for not using its influence to do more to stop the Darfur crisis.

A campaign to use the Olympics to put pressure on Beijing to do more to stop the violence has been gathering steam in recent weeks.

Last week, a group of U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to China's president suggesting that unless China changes its policies in Sudan, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games could become a disaster for the Chinese, rather than the image enhancer Beijing is expecting.

During a recent presidential race, French politicians floated the idea of an Olympic boycott and American actress Mia Farrow has also called on corporate sponsors of the Games to pressure China to do more to help stop the violence in Darfur.

A campaign launched by New York-based activist Jill Savitt called 'Olympic Dream for Darfur' has announced plans on its Web site for a torch relay from Darfur to Beijing to "urge China to use its influence with Khartoum."

China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports and sells the African country weapons and military aircraft. It has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur without Sudanese consent.

"The Chinese government, Chinese leaders and officials of the Chinese government at various levels are now in close touch and contact with relevant parties concerned," Yang said. "We hope that this issue will be resolved properly through dialogue and negotiation."

He said China believes "the political process and the peacekeeping operation should be pursued and promoted in a balanced manner."

Darfur: More From ABC News

More reports from ABC News that appear related to this one from yesterday.

Turn $5 Into Darfur Life Saver

The landscape of Darfur is an almost endless picture of hardship. The past four years of war have driven millions of men, women and children from their homes into sprawling, miserable refugee camps.

But during our trip to report on the suffering, we found one oasis of hope.

In the ZamZam refugee camp, which is now home to more than 40,000 people, the Safe Motherhood Center treats hundreds of women and their babies every day. Here, they fight disease and malnutrition, and educate women in the basics of safe childbirth and child care.

"Before the clinic, we had no help," one mother told me. "What would I do without this place?"

However, none of this would be here without the efforts of one American woman a world away in Baltimore. It all began a year ago when Patricia Crawford read a newspaper story about Darfur.

"There was an article in The New York Times last May around Memorial Day, and it was talking about how the camp was in danger of shutting down due to lack of funds," Crawford said. "So I was like, 'This can't happen.' I then tried to kind of surf my way through [the Web] to figure out who was involved and how I could get involved some way."

Crawford contacted Relief International, which runs the clinic, to find out how she could make a difference and ended up helping herself, too.

"I think I was going through a kind of pre-midlife crisis," Crawford said. "So it was all of this 'woe is me,' all of my friends are doing all of these wonderful things and when I read the article I was like, here's a bunch of people who would probably trade places with me in a second. And the more I thought about the circumstances -- their circumstances -- the less I thought about what was missing in my life. So it made me feel -- the more I focused on other people, the less sad I was about myself."

She developed a fund-raising plan and soon raised $10,000 around Baltimore and Washington, starting with friends and family but gradually expanding to include everyone from cabdrivers at Penn Station in Baltimore to the street flower vendor to the ambassador of South Africa.

"People started calling because they heard about us through friends of theirs who were contacted," Crawford explained. "It just all took this kind of exponentially branching effect. And everybody kind of said, 'Oh, I want to help. I want to help.' So I got offers coming in from almost everywhere."

The effect has been very real. Doctors at the clinic said the money has already saved hundreds of lives.

"Just $5 is a real help," said Dr. Khanlar Hajiyez, who supervises the clinic. "Five dollars can save one person's life."

Oil Wealth, Malls and Poverty

Travel to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum today and you'll find a city that is vastly different from the images of suffering the world sees from the country's Darfur region.

The old soukh in Omdurman used to be Khartoum's busiest market. Now it is giving way to a new Western-style mall, complete with high-fashion retailers and a bowling alley.

The capital's once famously unpaved roads have been replaced with new highways full of gleaming new cars.

The difference between these two regions is oil. Sudan has been riding a boom since it first started pumping oil in 1998. Today, all that new oil wealth helps many in the country's booming capital forget the suffering in Darfur.

"I think first of all politics and business should be separated," businessman Osama Abdul Latif told me.

Latif is building a brand new, $5 billion city center for Khartoum, which when finished will engulf what used to be the capital's most impressive landmark, the Hilton hotel, built by the United States.

"Obviously, American companies are losing out on all this work and I think it's a shame," Latif said. "But of course like anybody else, if you are put in a corner you have to find a solution."

China Delivers Investments, Restaurants to the Region

That solution is China. U.S. sanctions, which have been spurred in part by accusations of government-sanctioned genocide in Darfur, bar American firms from most business in Sudan, including oil. But Sudan has found an eager replacement in China, which now accounts for two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports. It is also providing some of the money for Latif's project.

The influence from China is visible across the capital. ABC News saw construction sites full of Chinese workers. We sampled one of several new -- and very busy -- Chinese restaurants. We also visited a school serving Khartoum's upwardly mobile professionals with Chinese language lessons.

China is even helping Khartoum's residents conquer the mighty Nile. For years, the only way for many resident to cross the river was by boat in sluggish ferries. But soon that's going to change. Next year, they'll be able to use a bridge going up, built by the Chinese and paid for with oil money.

Many believe oil money is also buying Sudan diplomatic cover. Beijing has blocked efforts to send peacekeepers to Darfur without Sudanese consent, prompting accusations that Beijing is abetting genocide. By some estimates, 80 percent of the Sudanese government's oil revenue goes to the military.

"The fact that Sudan has oil at a time when China needs it inoculates the regime to criticism," said Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." "They are able to do what they want in Darfur in the knowledge and in the expectation that many countries around the world care more about extracting their natural resources than care about the crimes of the magnitude of genocide."

Only recently, under threat of a possible boycott of next year's Beijing Olympics, has China begun to relent, saying it might contribute a few hundred Chinese engineers to a possible joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.

Sitting in Khartoum's stylish new Ozone Café -- a popular meeting place for the city's young professionals -- I chatted with Milhal Gador, a 20-something woman employed by a Chinese-Sudanese joint venture.

"Do you think oil money is good for Sudan?" I asked her.

"Yes, if it is perfectly utilized but it's not like that now," she said. "The rural places outside of Khartoum need more in development."

But she, like many other Sudanese I met, sees China not as a villain but as an indispensable partner in her country's development.

"The Chinese, you know, they helped us when no one helped us," she said.

And China continues to help Sudan, while in Darfur the country's oil wealth remains a distant mirage.

Darfur: Sudan Denies Discussing Hybrid Force

From the Sudan Tribune

Sudan has denied that it held any talks with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on the deployment of AU-UN hybrid force in troubled Darfur region.

An unidentified Sudanese official denied any contact with the UN Secretary General on the AU-UN hybrid operation in Darfur. He told the daily Al Rayaam newspaper on Friday that the last phone call between Ban and the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was “three weeks ago”.

Ban told Reuters television on Wednesday May 16 that he has a “firm agreement in principle between the Sudanese government and United Nations and African Union that there will be a hybrid operation, so therefore it is a matter of implementing this commitment.". He added that he recently conducted a series of telephone calls with the Sudanese president on the issue.

The Sudanese official expressed surprise at the Ban’s statements and stressed that his government has never agreed to the AU-UN hybrid force. He added that the UN Secretary General’s statement is an attempt by him to “ease pressure on the UN to take other measures against Sudan”.

The official’s statements cast a deep shadow of doubt over the success of Ban’s attempt to get Sudan’s approval for a AU-UN hybrid force. The US has signaled its impatience with the fruitless diplomacy of the UN Secretary General. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed frustration over the global community’s failure to act against Sudan over the bloodshed in Darfur.

The U.K., France and the U.S. have met with the UN Secretary General last week to express their concern about the slow progress in deploying the UN troops as part of the second phase of the AU-UN hybrid force. Analysts say that Western nations are concerned that Khartoum is not serious about following through on its commitments.

Darfur: UN Chief Holds Sudan to Agreement

From Reuters

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon intends to hold Khartoum to its "firm agreement" to allow the United Nations to bolster African Union soldiers with a force of more than 20,000 troops and police in Darfur.

At issue is a "hybrid" AU-U.N. force, with up to 24,000 troops, police and civilians, which the Sudanese government has said is too large and that African Union with its 7,000 troops can go it alone providing it gets U.N. financing.

But Ban, in an interview with Reuters television on Wednesday, said, "We have a firm agreement in principle between the Sudanese government and United Nations and African Union that there will be a hybrid operation, so therefore it is a matter of implementing this commitment."

"It is very important for Sudanese government to keep their commitment," he said, after having conducted a series of telephone calls with Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Aides describe Ban as persistent in pursuing agreement on the force, noting that he told the Korea Society earlier this week that Darfur put to the test "the authority of the Security Council, the image of the United Nations in the Arab world and the credibility of the United Nations."

At least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million are homeless since 2003 in ethnic and political conflict triggered by a rebellion in Darfur. Rebels are fighting government troops and their Janjaweed militia allies.

Sudan has accepted a so-called "heavy support package" of 4,000 extra peacekeepers, that will cost the United Nations some $289 million.

Ban said the new force would be headed by a "very distinguished Nigerian general." The current AU operation is under the command of Gen. Luke Aprezi of Nigeria.

Most of the 4,000 U.N. peacekeepers would staff control centers and provide other services but not join infantry units.

"There is an agreement that the major forces will be provided by Africans, but for administrative and financial and technical as well as the special forces will be manned by the United Nations," Ban said.

But at this point recruiting troops, while no peace pact is holding, is proving difficult.

"Now it is a matter how far we can get support from member states, including African states," Ban said.

At the same time, Ban, through Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson, has initiated talks between the government and rebel groups. Only one rebel faction signed an initial Darfur Peace Agreement with Khartoum last year.

Eliasson, visiting Washington, said he understood U.S. patience was limited in imposing further sanctions but that the timing had to be right for punitive measures.

"In my negotiations it's not bad to have the drums (threat of sanctions) in the background but you also must understand that we have worked very hard to open a little bit of diplomatic space," he told the Atlantic Council of the United States.

U.S. officials told Reuters the White House was becoming impatient that not enough progress was being made and could within the next week announce the new sanctions. But they stressed a final decision had not yet been taken.

The United States and Britain are also considering international sanctions in the U.N. Security Council, which would have a wider impact, including imposing an arms embargo on all of Sudan.

Darfur: Last-Minute Reprieve for Refugee

From the Independent

Lawyers have succeeded in preventing the deportation of a man who claims to be a survivor of the war in Darfur, after the British Government was accused of ignoring evidence that he belonged to a persecuted ethnic group.

Shoman Ahmed Mohammed was at Heathrow airport waiting for a flight to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, last night when news came through of a temporary injunction halting his deportation. Earlier, the Home Office rejected an appeal to reconsider his asylum application, as he could not prove he was from Darfur. Rights groups said evidence presented by his lawyers and the UK Darfuri community had been ignored. The injunction came through after days of campaigning by Aegis Students, headed by Sam Boarer.

In the three years since Mr Mohammed arrived in Britain, the conflict in his home region has intensified. More than 250,000 people have been killed and at least two million have been forced from their homes. Fighting continues to hamper the aid operation, and most of the refugee camps are full.

Like most Darfuris, Mr Mohammed does not have a birth certificate or any travel documents. But rights groups ­ among them anti-genocide campaigners at the Aegis Trust ­ have been angered by the Government's failure thoroughly to check Mr Mohammed's ethnicity.

"I've known Shoman for three years and shared accommodation with him for one," said Adam Hessen, a Darfuri survivor with refugee status. " There's no doubt that Shoman is from Darfur." Another Darfuri refugee, Mohammed Shoumo, said the asylum-seeker was a close family relative. " He's my mother's cousin," he said. There is a close family resemblance.

As a member of the Zarghawa tribe, one of the most terrorised groups in the region, Mr Mohammed faces a particularly uncertain future. Historically, the Zarghawa tribe has strong links to rebel movements in Darfur, notably the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which, unlike other Darfuri rebel groups such as some factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), continues to clash with Sudanese government forces and Janjaweed militia.

The backlash against the Zarghawas has been intense and many are fleeing into neighbouring Chad where fighting has also broken out. Most of the people who fill the camps in Darfur are Zarghawa or Masaleet ­ another marginalised group.

Before the injunction came through last night, the Aegis Trust spoke out against the ruling to return Mr Mohammed. "We call on John Reid to immediately suspend the removal in light of the dangers he would face in Khartoum," said James Smith, chief executive of the trust. " Furthermore, whatever procedures the Home Office currently uses to assess the ethnicity of people claiming to be from Darfur need to be reassessed and revised as a matter of urgency. Shoman's case clearly demonstrates the dangerous inadequacy of existing procedures."

In February this year, the Aegis Trust exposed the case of another Zarghawa refugee, Sadiq Adam Osman. He was returned to Khartoum after his application for asylum was rejected by the Home Office. He was tortured by Sudanese airport guards before escaping and his story was broadcast on Channel 4. Nothing has been heard from many of the other rejected asylum-seekers that Britain has returned.

In January, the Home Office confirmed that there were 136 Darfuris in Britain whose applications for asylum had been turned down. The Home Office has said it cannot comment on individual cases.

Darfur: Giuliani, Edwards Have Sudan Holdings

From the AP

Presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards, who have spoken out about genocide in Darfur, did not know their financial holdings included investments in companies that do business in Sudan, aides said Thursday.

An Edwards campaign spokesman said the former Democratic senator from North Carolina would sell thousands of dollars of Sudan-related funds.

"He did not know about it and will divest," Eric Schultz said following inquiries about Edwards' portfolio.

Giuliani, the Republican former mayor of New York, has at least one investment of between $500,000 and $1 million in a fund that holds stock in a company that is active in Sudan.

"The mayor was unaware of this connection, but is taking it very seriously," spokeswoman Maria Comella said.

She said Giuliani and his staff would review his portfolio and "ultimately take appropriate action."

The Sudan-related investments illustrate the pitfalls for candidates with vast holdings that are scrutinized during a presidential campaign.

Edwards and his wife reported more than $29 million in assets in his financial disclosures this week. Giuliani and his wife listed assets of similar size.

Earlier, two other presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, said they had divested their holdings of Sudan-related stock.

Obama placed the total value of his divestitures at $180,000. The sales of the investments were recorded in their financial disclosures.

Last year Brownback was among members of Congress who wrote 44 governors to urge them to divest their employee pension funds from businesses linked to Sudan.

Zimbabwe: Shock as Inflation Hits Massive 3714%

From the Scotsman.com

ZIMBABWE'S annual inflation rate surged to an unprecedented 3714 per cent at the end of April, the official state newspaper has reported.

The inflation figures were published as the government set up a commission to try to bring price rises down to single digit levels. Prices more than doubled last month as shown by a 100.7 per cent increase - the highest on record - in the consumer price index calculated by the state Central Statistical Office, the Herald newspaper said. In the past year they increased 36-fold.

On Monday President Robert Mugabe signed into law regulations to enforce wage and price controls through "comprehensive price surveys and inspections," with a penalty of up to five years in jail for violators. The ultimate aim would be to bring inflation into single digits.

In recent years, the government has tried to freeze prices for corn meal, bread, cooking oil, meat, school fees and transport costs with little success.

Darfur: Violence Continues to Hamper Humanitarian Operations

From the UN News Center

Although many humanitarian activities, including a successful polio vaccination campaign, are currently being carried out in Sudan’s Darfur region, violence continues to threaten the operations, according to the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).

“Incidents of road banditry and fighting between the warring factions continue to disrupt long-term planning,” spokesperson Radhia Achouri said today at the weekly UNMIS press conference in Khartoum.

She said that in North Darfur state, a non-governmental organization (NGO) was forced to suspend its food distributions in the Dar Zaghawa area as a result of aerial bombings by the Government and the high risk of carjackings.

“If the situation does not improve, the NGO’s suspension of activities could also affect the populations in Kutum Rural, thus leaving 165,000 people without food assistance at the beginning of the hungry season,” she added.

She also said that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the continuous stream of new internally displaced persons (IDPs) is putting a serious strain on several camps, where services and space are running out.

The fact that thousands of Chadian civilians are also streaming into West Darfur is a worrying development, according to OCHA, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is currently investigating the reasons behind this massive move.

Darfur: Residents Frustrated With Peace-Keeping Mission

A report from 49abcnews.com with video

Picture this: A sombre wedding in Darfur under the watchful eyes of African Union peacekeepers. But all they can do is watch.

And, under increasing attacks, they have retreated inside their bases.

When we joined African Union forces, villagers greeted them with frustration.

"You came here to protect us," one sheikh complained. "But the fact is you do nothing."

The African Union troops are only observers here. Their mandate does not give them the authority to intervene in the fighting.

In fact, they can only fire their weapons in self-defence.

They are vastly outnumbered -- 7,000 troops deployed in an area the size of Texas and caught in a multi-sided civil war.

"Anywhere we step, it still seems like we are stepping on somebody's foot," said AU civilian police officer Joseph Gyawu.

After four years of fighting, Darfur has degenerated into a confusing free-for-all.

Fourteen different rebel factions pitted against government forces and their Arab militias, called the Janjaweed.

It is the Janjaweed who are accused of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's African tribes.

At its core, they are fighting over the region's meagre resources.

But the cycle of violence has left Darfur almost ungovernable.

ABC News journalists navigated checkpoints run by the Sudanese Army and by one rebel group, then another.

One of the largest rebel groups took us to a village never before seen by outsiders.

Rebels say the Janjaweed stormed through one community, burning huts to the ground, leaving only mud walls behind, and killing more than 200 people.

They say they will keep fighting to keep this from happening again.

But just last week, government planes bombed the area again.

Many believe their best hope would be a large deployment of UN peacekeepers, with a mandate to use force. But the Sudan government won't let them in.

"We don't want a foreign occupation like Iraq. The local governor told us Darfur is peaceful," said Gov. Yosuf Kibir of North Darfur.

An outrageous claim we saw the Janjaweed roaming Darfur's capital freely.

Truth is, the gun is still the only law here.

Darfur: Talks May Help Unite Rebel Forces

From the Washington Post

The regional government of southern Sudan plans to bring together Darfur rebel factions for a meeting in preparation for future peace talks with Sudan's central government, said the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, Jan Eliasson.

Just back from a trip to the southern city of Juba and the capital, Khartoum, Eliasson, a former foreign minister of Sweden, said he found it hard to be upbeat about the prospects.

"There is a beginning of a political process, but I have difficulty using the word optimism. Time is on nobody's side. We cannot give up, though," Eliasson said in an interview in Washington. Over the past months, several European ministers and nongovernmental organizations have pressed the Darfur rebels to unify their positions and demands to facilitate negotiations with the Sudanese government.

Eliasson expressed concern over three developments he has observed in the four trips he has taken to Sudan and its Darfur region in the past five months. He warned of land grabs, infighting among Sudanese tribes, and a radicalization and taking up of arms by refugee camp residents, factors that might scuttle prospects for peace in the troubled western region.

"We see new problems erupting in Darfur among the tribes themselves. They are competing on what scorched land is left after the burnings and killings, and there is more fighting among them than between the rebels and the government," he said.

The U.N. envoy returned last week from Sudan, where he met with ministers in President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government as well as Vice President Salva Kiir Mayardit, who heads the southern regional government. Eliasson was accompanied by African Union envoy Salim Salim of Tanzania.

The willingness of southern Sudan's regional government to host the meeting is significant, since rebels in the south ended 21 years of fighting with the central government under a 2005 peace agreement that has been seen by some as a model for ending the crisis in Darfur.

The Darfur conflict began in early 2003 when rebels rose up against the government, which responded by arming and supporting Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. More than 450,000 people have died from violence and disease and more than 2.5 million have been forced from their homes, with many living in vast refugee camps.

The Sudanese government has provided arms and vehicles to nomadic tribes, which have launched repeated attacks. Janjaweed militiamen, often riding on horseback, have been blamed for much of the violence, including the burning of villages.

Eliasson also expressed concern over the infiltration of weapons into the refugee camps. "There has been a radicalization inside the camps. People are trying to survive in unbearable conditions, and in some cases there are guns showing up inside the camps," he said. "The longer this conflict drags on, the more problems we face. How do we deal with tribal fighting and radicalization in the camps?"

Darfur: Eliasson Credits China/US Delay on Sanctions Helped

From the AP

China's economic alliance with Sudan has not prevented Beijing from exerting pressure on Khartoum to accept deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur, according to a top United Nations diplomat.

China, said Jan Eliasson, special UN envoy for Darfur, "does not want to be seen stopping progress in Darfur."

Eliasson, speaking late Thursday, said it was Chinese pressure that had helped persuade Sudanese officials to lift their opposition to the deployment of 3,000 UN peacekeepers in Darfur. That force will pave the way for an additional 17,000 peacekeepers, who would protect the 2.5 million Darfurians in refugee camps and ensure safe delivery of humanitarian supplies.

Eliasson spoke at the Atlantic Council, a group that promotes close U.S.-European ties.

At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur during more than four years of conflict. The Bush administration has classified the violence as genocide.

An ill-equipped African Union military-civilian force of 7,000 is in Darfur, which is about the size of Myanmar.

Beijing has been widely criticized for the friendship it has shown toward Sudan, a major supplier of oil to China.

But Eliasson said Beijing might be worried that it could be held responsible if conditions in Darfur deteriorate further, sullying China's reputation as it prepares to be host to the 2008 Summer Olympics.

"They see danger if the situation persists, and China gets the blame," he said.

Eliasson, who recently visited Darfur, said it was important for rebel groups there to coordinate their positions so that they present a united front if negotiations with the government and government-backed militias resume.

One positive sign, he said, is the general agreement among Darfur's multiple rebel groups on the shape of a final settlement: compensation for long years of death and destruction and a sharing of power and wealth.

From Reuters

The U.N.'s special envoy to Darfur said on Wednesday Washington's delay in imposing new sanctions against Sudan had given him "diplomatic space" to pressure Khartoum and try to bring warring factions together.

U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson said he understood U.S. patience was limited but the timing had to be right for more punitive measures, and he cautioned that governments often blamed their problems on sanctions imposed by the outside world.

"In my negotiations it's not bad to have the drums (threat of sanctions) in the background but you also must understand that we have worked very hard to open a little bit of diplomatic space," he told the Atlantic Council of the United States.

"The parties certainly hear the drums in the background," he added.

Last month, U.S. President George W. Bush said he would hold off on imposing new sanctions against Sudan in order to give the United Nations more time to negotiate with Khartoum over accepting a hybrid U.N./African Union force in Darfur.

U.S. officials told Reuters the White House was becoming impatient that not enough progress was being made and could within the next week announce the new sanctions. But they stressed a final decision had not yet been taken.

One possibility was to announce new measures on Friday -- exactly one month after Bush said in a speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington that Sudan had one last chance to stop the violence in Darfur or new sanctions would be imposed.

Since 2003, more than 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which flared when rebels took up arms against the government, accusing it of neglect. Aid groups estimate more than 2.5 million people have been displaced.

The United States already has sanctions in place. The new measures would include the barring of an additional 29 companies owned or controlled by Sudan's government from the U.S. financial system.

In addition, Washington would enact sanctions against individuals responsible for the violence, and Bush has raised the possibility of an international no-fly zone aimed at preventing Sudanese military aircraft from flying over Darfur.

Eliasson, who declined to say whether he supported or rejected new U.S. sanctions, said any new measures should be as precise and targeted as possible.

The U.N. envoy, who was in Sudan last week, said people in the south of the country, in particular, were very concerned over the threat of new sanctions.

"If they feel that the outside world is hurting their economic interests, they will have weakened positions," Eliasson said.

U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, who also attended the speech, declined comment on the sanctions issue.

Sudan's government has agreed to a "heavy support package" for Darfur, consisting of about 3,000 troops, but has not approved the hybrid force of more than 20,000 troops and police, which the U.N. authorized last August.

Eliasson said the 3,000 new troops would not be deployed during the upcoming rainy season and he did not supply a date for their arrival.

Getting the Sudanese to agree to the heavy support package was, he said, "like pulling out a tooth -- the old way."

Darfur: Sudan Official Cautions China on Oil Investments

From Reuters

A Sudanese central bank official told China on Thursday its oil investments could exacerbate conflicts in Sudan unless it pressed the government to engage local populations and share revenues.

China, which buys much of Sudan's oil, has been under fire internationally for doing business with a regime condemned in the West for its actions in Darfur, but the banker's comments were a rare critical voice coming from Khartoum.

"When you exploit oil and resources and nothing goes to the population, then you are financing the war against them with resources and that is negative," deputy central bank governor Elijah Aleng told reporters on the sidelines of the African Development Bank's annual meeting.

Much of Sudan's oil is in the south of the country, where a 2005 deal ended a two-decade civil war between the Islamist government in Khartoum and mostly animist and Christian southern rebels.

But sharing oil revenues and the demarcation of a common border through an area straddling Sudan's richest energy reserves have been sticking points of the pact.

Several members of the government were once senior members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, like Aleng, and remain sometime critics.

Aleng once headed the humanitarian wing of the main southern rebel group and said the south could again become restive if the local population felt it was being shut out of the region's oil wealth.

"You know what is happening today in the Niger Delta in Nigeria?" he asked.

A surge in violence there has shut off about a fifth of Nigeria's oil supply, led companies to evacuate staff and resulted in several hostage-takings, including those involving Chinese workers.

"We don't want that to happen in the south, but that can happen very easily, when the population feel their government is not taking care of them," Aleng said.

Since the state oil group CNPC entered Sudan in 1995, it has been China's largest overseas investment destination for energy projects, including oil exploration and production, refinery and petrochemical production as well as pump stations.

China now produces roughly 226,000 barrels of oil every day from three oil fields in Sudan, or about 3 percent of China's demand.

In a separate conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur, more than 200,000 people are estimated to have died and about 2.5 million displaced in fighting between rebels and state-linked militias.

Rights groups have urged a boycott of Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games over its oil investments in Sudan and its resistance to calls to send U.N. peacekeepers without Khartoum's consent.

Aleng said Chinese investment was welcome, but its companies must be mindful of volatile local politics.

"We have invited the Chinese to invest in our oil industry. But we are advising them to invest with a human face," he said.

"You come and exploit a resource, you are a part of the land, and those who belong to that land must get a part of the resource, a part of the cake. That is the natural logic," said Aleng.

"When that is not done, you are creating a friction between the communities and the oil exploiters, in this case the government of China."

From AFP

Sudan central bank deputy governor Elijah Aleng criticised China on Thursday for promoting energy projects that in effect could worsen a four-year civil war in the strife-torn nation.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the African Development Bank meeting in Shanghai, Aleng said Chinese investment in Sudanese oil could help fund weapons purchases in the northeast African nation.

"They might have good intentions but when you exploit oil resources and you sell it, and nothing goes to the populations, then you are financing the war against them with the resources," Aleng said.

China is the leading customer for Sudanese oil and a key supplier of military arms and equipment to Sudan.

About 200 000 people have died in the four-year civil war in western Sudan's Darfur region and two million more have fled their homes according to UN figures, although some sources put the death toll much higher.

China has been roundly criticised for not using its clout as a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council to force Khartoum to end the violence in Darfur, where ethnic tensions erupted into a revolt in 2003.

Aleng urged China to use its position to greater influence.

"We would like (China's UN vote) to be used in such a way that it creates harmony in Sudan, not discord," Aleng said.

Aleng's comments flew in the face of a speech by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the two-day African Development Bank meeting that stressed China's interests in the continent were well-intentioned.

"We are truly sincere in helping Africa speed up its economic and social development for the benefit of African countries and its people," Wen told the 2 000 delegates attending the meeting on Wednesday.

Darfur: Fidelity Says it Did Not Divest

From The Boston Globe

Fidelity Investments, which has long sought to distance its investment choices from political questions, said yesterday its sharp reductions of holdings in oil companies targeted by human-rights activists over their ties to Sudan's rulers were not a coordinated corporate response to the criticism.

Rather, said Anne Crowley, a spokeswoman for the Boston mutual-fund giant, the sales were decided by the managers of individual Fidelity funds. Each "works to take into account factors that could have an appreciable impact on the potential return of the stock in the short term or the long term," Crowley said. "Fidelity doesn't tell fund managers how or when to buy or sell any given stock," she said.

Fidelity filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday that showed its ownership of PetroChina Co. shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange declining from about 4.5 million shares earlier this year to 420,916 as of the end of March, a decrease of more than 90 per cent.

PetroChina is part of a Chinese energy corporation accused by human-rights activists of paying royalties that fund violent campaigns in Sudan's Darfur region. Filings also show Fidelity sold many shares in another Chinese oil firm, Sinopec, that has drawn similar criticism.

Activists praised the sell-off in shares. David Rubenstein, director of a human-rights coalition in Washington, said the sales show Fidelity "appears to be making a genuine effort to financially separate from PetroChina."

But he cautioned it is too soon to tell whether Fidelity fully divested its shares or instead shifted its ownership in ways that its public filings don't yet reflect. For example, Fidelity also owns shares in PetroChina that are traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. As of October, the last time it reported those holdings, Fidelity was the eighth-largest holder of PetroChina shares on the Hong Kong exchange, with 206,000. Rubinstein called on Fidelity to provide more details of its holdings.

To fund industry observers, Fidelity's sell-off underscores the growing tension money managers face over their holdings.

For the past two decades, human-rights groups have successfully pressured university endowments and public-pension funds to divest their holdings in politically sensitive regions, such as South Africa during apartheid. More recently, activists have also begun to pressure mutual funds over the same kinds of investments, as well as on other issues, such as global warming and gay marriage, reasoning the funds should respond to the wishes of investors who put billions of dollars a year under their control.

While 54.9 million American households owned mutual funds last year, these funds face fewer requirements to explain their decisions compared with publicly traded companies.

That's especially true in the case of Fidelity, controlled by its founding Johnson family whose leaders rarely grant interviews.

John Bonnanzio, who edits a newsletter for Fidelity fund shareholders, said pressure over the PetroChina holdings amounted to a special case Fidelity had to address. "It would be very unusual for Fidelity to fold on this kind of an issue, but there's really no precedent for this situation in Sudan," Bonnanzio said in an interview. He said the activists' campaign likely contributed to the managers' decisions to sell the shares. "It would certainly be an extraordinary coincidence for them to have sold these shares otherwise," he said.

[edit]

Fidelity's actions have drawn particular attention from activists, however, who say its size and widespread advertising make it an obvious target.

Fidelity responds that its holdings are permitted under US regulations and that, as Crowley put it, "Our funds have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the financial interests of their investors, in keeping with the investment policies for each fund. This is not Fidelity investing its own money, this is Fidelity investing the money of millions of people."

The situation in Darfur, she said, "is a matter to be properly resolved by the governments of the world and the United Nations. And we truly hope they will do what is right."

Darfur: Egypt to Send 2000 Troops

From The Daily Monitor

The Egyptian government has approved proposal to dispatch up to 2000 soldiers to take part in the heavy support mission in Darfur.

Welcoming Egypt's decision to deploy the soldiers, Ambassador Ali Al Sadeq, the Spokesman for Sudanese Foreign Ministry described the move as brave and reflecting the depth of the brotherly relations of binding the two countries.
Africa 2007

"Egypt's stance vis-à-vis the Darfur crisis much corresponds to the requisites of good neighbourliness and expresses the feelings of great common responsibilities," said the Spokesman.

The UN has said it welcomed the deployment, adding Egypt has had many contributions to the peace-keeping forces.

Darfur: The Underground Conflict

From Marketplace

GRETCHEN WILSON: Camel drivers in Darfur used to take their herds through age-old migration routes. Now they push them further south to follow the receding belts of grass and water. That puts them in direct conflict with farmers and other herders who are all scrambling for the same scarce resources.

And that's just the turf war above ground. But lines are being drawn for what's beneath the surface. Abdul-Rahim Hamdi is Sudan's former finance minister.

ABDUL-RAHIM HAMDI: The geological formations in Darfur are conducive to exploration of oil. You may find oil there. Because oil is in Chad. Oil is in the south.

There's no seismic data yet of the amount of reserves, but a U.S. Department of Energy official told me there's "a very good chance" that there are commercially viable oil reserves in Darfur. The U.S. says it has no diplomatic or economic interests here. Joel Mayberry is a spokesman at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum.

JOEL MAYBERRY: Really our focus is responding to humanitarian crisis and urging Sudan to cooperate.

But President Omar al-Bashir is skeptical. He says U.S. humanitarian efforts are really a guise to overthrow his regime. Increasingly analysts point to Iraq and say U.S. interest in Darfur is about gaining leverage in an oil-producing state.

Right now, the U.S. can't do business in Sudan because of its own trade embargo, designed to put economic pressure on the government. Again, Hamdi:

HAMDI: They want a weak government which they can control or which they can influence. Darfur is a political problem! Designed to cripple the regime and, if need be, to crush it!

French, Chinese and other oil companies aren't restrained by these sanctions. They're in a pole position if Darfur's resources open up.

If reserves are proven in Darfur, it could turn the tide in that region's conflict. That's what happened in Sudan's other war — a long-running civil war between the North and South. After oil was discovered in the 1990s, both sides there agreed to stop fighting in order to collect the oil revenue.

Malik Agar Eyre was a leader in South Sudan's war against the North, and is now the investment minister. (:19)

MALIK AGAR EYRE: Peace is a key in any country, not only in Sudan. Whatever you have, if you don't have peace, you don't have development, and you don't have capital that is flowing in. Because why would somebody put his money in a sinking boat? Why would an investor do that?

The same logic could foster peace in Darfur. Like the South, rebels there say they want a share of the money that's concentrated in Khartoum. Under the shaky peace agreement signed last May, Darfurians would have the right to share in any oil wealth.

But some say peace isn't necessary to pump oil, especially if you do it on the sly. Siphamandla Zondi is director of the Africa program at the Institute for Global Dialogue.

SIPHAMANDLA ZONDI: In many case, maximum exploitation of oil resources using private international companies has thrived when there is chaos, when there is instability, when there is not democracy, when there is dictatorship.

Zondi says while South Sudan's oil revenue is supposed to be split 50-50 with the North, no one is really watching to see who gets what. Most observers agree the South isn't yet getting it's fair share. And the same could happen in Darfur.

ZONDI: Oil has become a curse in Sudan and makes it very difficult to bring about a resolution of the situation there. That means that Darfurians aren't likely to see a serious move towards peace, simply because they have oil.

No one knows how much oil is in Darfur. Or how much could be coming out. And this will likely not be the last battle fought over Darfur's resources. There are already rumors of rich deposits of uranium and copper.

Uganda: Child Soldiers Fight for Fresh Start

From Newsweek

In waging its guerrilla war, the LRA found children useful as pliant slaves in camp and remorseless fighters in the field. More than 30,000 have been abducted since the late 1980s. In the Ugandan countryside, fear of LRA raids after sunset forced thousands of besieged children to make "night commutes" from rural villages and internal displacement camps to bigger towns in hopes of finding safe shelter. In recent months, however, the prospects for an end to what residents of Ugandan's calm capital Kampala see as the war in the north have improved. The LRA once counted on the backing of the Sudanese government, which was fighting a war in southern Sudan, near the Ugandan border, against rebels of Sudan People's Liberation Army. In the cynical calculus of unconventional warfare, Kampala would back Sudanese rebels while Khartoum supported Ugandan ones. But the long-running war in southern Sudan ended with a peace settlement in 2005, even as the war waged by other groups in the west of the country—Darfur—heated up.

At the same time, the Sudanese government, under increasing pressure on other fronts, started to find its alliance with the LRA in Uganda a liability. The group's bizarre and horrifying zeal massacring the very people it claimed it was fighting to protect became known to the outside world. Sympathy for its cause among the northern tribes of Uganda dwindled, eventually leading to peace talks between the LRA and the Kampala government in the southern Sudanese city of Juba last year. Inevitably, the road to a lasting ceasefire has not been easy. The ongoing Juba discussions stalled and remained at an impasse until last month, when an agreement was reached to extend a truce forged last August and return to the negotiating table. However, sticking points remain, among them the LRA's insistence that the International Criminal Court drop outstanding charges against Kony and his commanders.

While the negotiations stop and start, the children at the Rachele Center are enjoying their chance to act like kids again. Social workers try to remove some of the most tangible reminders by encouraging the children to turn their backs symbolically on the past by throwing their clothes into a bonfire. Their painfully innocent drawings were also on the way to the trash until case workers casually showed them to a visitor during an office clean out. Though critical to therapy, most are discarded after the child starts to function again. Yet some, like one 15-year-old who had his fingers chopped off for refusing an order to kill while captive, have begun to dream of more idyllic pictures. Heralded as Rachele's most talented artist, the lanky boy stands proudly amongst a few of his colorful canvases outside of his dormitory, his smile revealing not a shred of self-pity. He's safe, free and able to go to school—and he knows that this indeed makes him one of the lucky ones.

Sudan: Daunting Task of Assisting Returnees

From IRIN

Mary Kwol, a 35-year-old single mother of six, has been living in a Khartoum camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) for nearly 30 years. She arrived in the Omdurman el-Salaam camp with her parents when she was six and has raised all her children there.

She now wants to go back to Unity state in the south where she hopes to find better opportunities to enable her to take care of her children, five of whom are younger than 10.

"Life here [in the camp] has been tough. I walk around town looking for odd jobs, mostly washing clothes for people to earn some money to buy food for my children. Maybe I will not be much better off in the village but at least there will be land on which to grow our own food," Kwol told IRIN at a departure centre where the United Nations-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) was registering displaced people who have decided to go back to their villages in southern Sudan.

Tens of thousands of people, both refugees and IDPs, have returned to Southern Sudan since the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended two decades of war between former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the government in Khartoum.

According to the IOM, at least 50,000 people have been helped to move from Khartoum and South Darfur to South Kordofan and South Sudan. An airlift is planned in June once the rains set in, from Khartoum to south Sudan, as well as barge operations on the Nile from Kosti in White Nile State to the south.

The programme for the organised return of IDPs was prepared jointly by Sudan's Government of National Unity in Khartoum, the Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS), the UN and the IOM, the implementing agency.

Threat of landmines, LRA attacks

Kosti Manibe, the minister for humanitarian affairs in the Government of National Unity and himself a southerner, said landmines on some of the roads that would have been used to take displaced people home have slowed down the exercise. Some sections of the railway line have also been mined.

Attacks by the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), were preventing returns to areas in the Equatoria states, Manibe said, adding, however, that the situation was now under control and that the Southern Sudanese army was more organised and better placed to protect civilians from threats posed by armed groups.

He said it was estimated that 20 percent of the total number of people who were displaced from Southern Sudan would opt to be integrated with host communities in areas where they sought refuge, and these people, too, would require assistance. Aid workers, however, believe larger numbers of the displaced will elect to remain where they are, in Khartoum, for example.

The aim is to help IDPs, including 150,000 in Khartoum, return to their original villages in Southern Sudan. Returnees are also being helped to go back from other states such as South Darfur to Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, Wau town to Warrap and Equatoria to Bor, according to Pat Duggan, senior return, reintegration and recovery officer with the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).

"One of the big challenges actually is the weather. For instance, we can't do road convoys during the wet season, so after May or early June it becomes very hard to continue road movements. Road movements to a number of states stopped in early May. Returns by barge or air will only be to main cities or main towns," she said.

Darfur: Work at GI-Net

Two job listings from the Genocide Intervention Network

PAID INTERNSHIP: Online Anti-Genocide Organizer and Web Developer

Are you interested in changing the world by supporting the first-ever permanent anti-genocide constituency? Do you spend a lot of time online and know what an effective advocacy campaign looks like? Can you build a website from the ground up? If any of the above appeals to you, we hope you will consider the Genocide Intervention Network's online anti-genocide organizer and web developer internship this summer at our office in Washington, D.C. GI-Net is committed to building the first permanent constituency dedicated to ending genocide, and empowers its members with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Currently we are focused on ensuring protection for civilians in Darfur, Sudan.

As an intern, you will work side-by-side the leaders of the organization in conceiving, developing and implementing innovative online campaigns to support the work GI-Net is doing. In particular, you will have the opportunity to put your ideas into action — helping the organization raise money for peacekeeping in Darfur, mobilize a diverse constituency in supporting anti-genocide legislation and educate the public about the need for a new response to genocide.

Specific job areas will include helping to design and/or program campaign websites, "web 2.0" projects, reaching out to members through social networking (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), contributing to action alerts and reaching out to bloggers and online opinion leaders.

This internship has flexible start and end dates and can be full- or part-time as your schedule allows.

More information and how to apply:
http://www.genocideintervention.net/about/jobs/i-web.php

JOB: Information Technology and Web Development Associate

The Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) is changing the way the United States and the international community respond to the world's worst crime by building the first permanent constituency dedicated to ending genocide. GI-Net empowers individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide, to educate their communities, pressure their elected officials, and fundraise directly for civilian protection. Currently, the organization's work is focused on ending the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan; providing material support for African Union peacekeepers in the region and organizing political action campaigns for a more robust civilian protection force.

GI-Net operates a number of online campaigns, including our primary website, GenocideIntervention.net, our student-oriented website, STANDNow.org, and campaign websites such as DarfurScores.org, SudanDivestment.org and 1800Genocide.com. The Genocide Intervention Network seeks an experienced professional to assist in the development and maintenance projects for GI-Net's interactive website. These positions will provide invaluable experience and is ideal for college students or recent college grads seeking to be a critical part of a successful start-up non-profit organization.

Specific job areas will include helping to develop overall online strategy, design and development of campaign websites, "web 2.0" projects, reaching out to members through social networking (MySpace, Facebook, etc.), and helping different departments maintain their sections of the website.

More information and how to apply:
http://www.genocideintervention.net/about/jobs/itassoc.php

Darfur: Cavalier Seeks Players’ Support and Activism

From the New York Times

Ira Newble was not politically active until he read about Eric Reeves. Reeves was not a fan of professional basketball until he received a flurry of e-mail messages from Newble.

But Reeves, a 57-year-old English professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, is now rooting hard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Newble, a Cavs reserve, is now pushing hard to advance Reeves’s humanitarian cause.

Their common ground is Darfur, the region of Sudan where an armed conflict has caused the death of an estimated 500,000 civilians and the displacement of 2.5 million others. It has been called genocide by a number of governments, including the United States, and by Reeves, a leading scholar on the conflict.

A passionate advocate for international intervention, Reeves was profiled by USA Today in March. Newble read the story while the Cavs were on the road, and was so moved that he reached out to Reeves.

“There’s innocent people dying, and it’s just a tragedy to stand back and let them do what they’re doing,” Newble said.

So Newble chose to act. He absorbed as much information as he could find on the Internet. He downloaded fact sheets and articles, made printouts and put copies in every teammate’s locker.

The result is a letter, signed by Newble and most of his teammates and released last week, that takes aim at China, which supplies the Sudanese government with money and weapons. China, in turn, is a major importer of Sudan’s oil.

The letter reads in part, “We, as basketball players in the N.B.A. and as potential athletes in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, cannot look on with indifference to the massive human suffering and destruction that continue in the Darfur region of Sudan.” It concludes with a plea to the Chinese government “to use all available diplomatic resources and economic pressure to end the agony of Darfur, and to secure access for U.N. peace support personnel.”

The letter has not been signed by the star LeBron James but has been endorsed by most of the Cavaliers’ roster, including the starters Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlovic and Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Reeves said this simple gesture could be the start of something much greater.

“This is the catalyst that’s going to stimulate within the sports world a phenomenal response, and an international response to the realities in Darfur, which the world has allowed,” Reeves said in a telephone interview. “This is the fifth year of genocidal destruction. It’s unconscionable that the international community has allowed this to continue for so long.”

Newble is reaching out to as many of the N.B.A.’s 400-plus players as he can. His agent, Steve Kauffman, has spread the word through his peers. Kauffman also plans to contact the players unions of the National Football League and Major League Baseball to enlist their support.

Reeves envisions the movement spreading across the athletic spectrum. Advocates have reached out to Muhammad Ali, perhaps the most famous athlete-activist, and are optimistic that he will join their cause.

Reeves and others say China holds the key to improving the situation in Darfur. They are highlighting Beijing’s role as the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, but are not calling for a boycott.

Darfur: Menendez and Brownback to Introduce China Measure

From the Courier Post

Sen. Robert Menendez plans to introduce a Senate measure Wednesday urging China to use its "unique influence and economic leverage" in Sudan to end what U.S. authorities call a genocide in the Darfur region.

China is in a key position to end the ethnic violence because it buys 70 percent of Sudan's oil and has invested about $10 billion in the Sudanese energy industry since 1990, according to the text of the resolution provided by Menendez's office.

China has also pledged to develop closer military ties with Sudan. The measure by Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also calls on Sudan to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force, something the country has refused thus far.

The U.N. estimates that more than 400,000 people have been killed and nearly 2 million people displaced since the Sudanese army and government-supported Arab militias began fighting in 2003 with rebel groups seeking to end discrimination against ethnic Africans.

Thousands of women and girls have been raped and assaulted.

From The Hill

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) will introduce a Senate resolution today calling for China to use its influence to stop genocide and violence in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The resolution criticizes China for being “reluctant” to use its political capital to end the conflict in Darfur. China “should be held accountable to act consistently with the Olympic standard of preserving human dignity in Darfur, Sudan and around the world,” the resolution states.

It does not, however, call for a boycott of next year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing, which China is eagerly anticipating. Chinese officials in Washington have warned members of Congress and activist groups that an Olympic boycott would not help resolve the Darfur conflict.

China has attracted criticism in Washington for not doing enough to end the violence in Darfur, where militias backed by Sudan’s government are accused of killing hundreds of thousands. Critics have highlighted China’s economic and military ties to Sudan, which sells 70 percent of its oil to China.

The resolution states that China ought to use its influence to get Sudan’s government to accept a robust peacekeeping force that would include United Nations troops, and to convince Sudan to comply with U.N. resolutions that seek to disarm militias operating in Sudan.

It concludes by stating that Congress recognizes the Olympic spirit “is incompatible with actions supporting acts of genocide.”

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) expects to introduce similar if not identical legislation as early as May 17, according to a House aide, who said Lee is still shoring up Republican cosponsors for the bill.

House and Senate aides acknowledged some might want to see tougher language, but said the resolution as worded gives China an opportunity to put pressure on Sudan, and also shows China’s government that Congress is watching it closely.

AU: New Fund to Support Peacekeepers

From IRIN

The African Union (AU) and donors, including the G8 countries, have agreed to set up a fund to support underfunded peacekeeping missions on the continent, officials said.

To be funded as part of the AU’s Complementary Peace Facility, it is expected to augment the existing European Union-Africa Peace Facility (EU-APF) and increase resources available for Africa-led peace support operations. It will also cover budget lines that cannot be financed by the APF, according to Said Djinnit, the AU's commissioner for peace and security.

"In the absence of adequate and predictable funding, especially for African-led peace-support operations, all efforts being exerted at the level of the continent to bring lasting peace and stability will be much more difficult to carry out successfully," Djinnit said.

The EU is the largest donor to the AU peacekeeping missions. The AU and EU have already signed a 7.5 million Euro (US$10.2 million) agreement for the enhancement of early warning and conflict prevention - part of the long-term capacity-building component of the APF.

The two bodies are also discussing additional funding to strengthen the capacity of the AU and the regional economic communities in peace and support operations and conflict resolution.

Claas Knoop, the German ambassador to Ethiopia, who co-chaired a meeting between the AU, G8 and donors to discuss the proposed fund, said on Monday the exact details had yet to be finalised.

The AU has several peacekeeping missions in Africa, including Darfur, Somalia, Burundi and the Comoros. However, most have experienced resource constraints.

The mission in Darfur in particular has been criticised as being ineffective - a charge the AU says is a direct result of inadequate resources. The one in Somalia has equally been limited by resources, a situation that has left only 1,600 troops deployed out of the proposed 8,000.

Djinnit said beyond the serious shortfall in the financial resources of the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), the ad hoc nature of a significant part of the funding had led to a lack of predictability. This had made it difficult to plan, launch and sustain peace support operations.

"Even though the AU is not yet fully equipped and prepared, we are morally obliged to do whatever it takes to prevent the occurrence of conflicts and where they do erupt, facilitate their resolution," he said.

While the United Nations had the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, its intervention in peacekeeping in Africa had been limited for several reasons.

"A number of conflict situations on the continent do not lend themselves [to intervention] either because the conditions on the ground are not perceived as being conducive or the parties involved are opposed to such intervention," he said.

Djinnit requested the G8 countries push the agenda that Africa-led missions be undertaken with the consent of the UN Security Council and with funding from the UN.

Darfur: The China Problem

From the New York Sun

China yielded last week to international pressure and appointed an envoy for African Affairs. The hope in Western capitals is that Liu Guijin, a former ambassador to Zimbabwe, will persuade the Sudanese government to end the crisis in its Darfur region. Why are we looking toward China to solve a crisis thousands of miles from its borders? Beijing supports the Sudanese government, which in turn sponsors the Janjaweed militia. The Janjaweed has murdered more 200,000 civilians in Darfur and driven another 2.5 million of them from their homes during four years of conflict. The Associated Press calls Darfur "the world's largest humanitarian disaster."

How is China involved in helping the Arab-dominated government kill its black African citizens? It buys about two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports. About 70% of Sudan's oil revenues go to its military, which is involved in the mass murders. Yet China's involvement is not just indirect. China sells arms and aircraft to Sudan in a manner that is almost certainly in violation of the United Nations's arms embargo. As important, Beijing has used its permanent seat on the Security Council to shield Khartoum from effective action by the international community. This has had the effect of continuing what America terms "genocide." As Darfur activists Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow recently wrote, "Beijing is uniquely positioned to put a stop to the slaughter, yet they have so far been unabashed in their refusal to do so."

So if Beijing is responsible for the acts of the government in Khartoum — and it certainly is under the common understanding of that term — then are there other parties accountable for Darfur because they support the Chinese government? As a theoretical matter, there might be. If an enabler is answerable for another's acts, then so should a party that enables the enabler.

So who is enabling the Chinese? America and other Western nations do not treat China as just another state; they actively engage Beijing and support it. For three decades it has been our fond hope that the Chinese will make the transition to representative governance and free markets from Maoism and Marxism. We have sought to help in this makeover, and, as a result, we have provided technical and material aid to China. More important, we have also been patient with the Chinese, continually tolerating international conduct that is unacceptable. We have the best of intentions, but we may be producing the worst of results.

The issue therefore arises: At what point do other nations begin to share in Beijing's culpability? The Farrows link Western support of the Olympics and Beijing's cynical policy in Sudan. With such an expansive view of responsibility it is not surprising that Ms. Farrow is now organizing a new campaign, Divest for Darfur. The goal is to cut the flow of cash to the Sudanese military. For this purpose activists seek to have Berkshire Hathaway and Fidelity Investments sell their holdings in PetroChina, whose parent company has oil fields in Sudan. The ties between the Janjaweed and these American businesses are hardly direct, but Darfur campaigners essentially make the argument that attenuation does not matter.

They have a point that everything is connected to each other and each link of a chain is crucial.

The shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway did not buy their argument — this month they overwhelming rejected a proxy resolution ordering divestment in PetroChina. The Fidelity Investment proposal is also headed for defeat. Yet the divestment idea is catching on. At the end of April the University of Massachusetts announced that it would divest companies involved in Sudan. Last week in Kansas, Governor Sebelius signed a law ordering the state's largest pension fund to stop investing in companies, including PetroChina, doing business in Sudan. The legislation, modeled on a California law, also requires divestment.

So should the United States "divest" China, so to speak? In theory, the principle that applies to pension fund investments should also apply to diplomatic relations. Surprisingly, we have yet to publicly talk about the moral questions that arise from our engagement of China while it helps perpetuate gruesome activities in Africa.

Unfortunately, this is not just some abstract inquiry. These days, the Chinese may say they want the killing in Darfur to stop, yet they are not willing to take steps within their power to end it. During the third week of April China's Foreign Ministry stated that it still was "not a proper time to discuss sanctions." It also indicated that it would block the efforts of America and Britain to impose them. Although new sanctions will not automatically bring peace to Darfur, they are a precondition for the restoration of order in this especially troubled area.

So it is clear that Beijing is blocking a solution. By now China has no excuse for supporting the Sudanese government. And until it withdraws its assistance to Khartoum, we should think about all the implications of our engagement of the government in Beijing. After all, China is not just about China anymore.

Darfur: Khartoum Says AU Funding a Prerequisite for Implementing Phase II

From the Sudan Tribune

The Sudanese government said today that it will not provide the logistics needed for the accommodation of the UN troops that will be deployed in Darfur, before agreeing on funding needs of the African Union forces.

In his statements by, published by the daily Al-Sahafa, the spokesman for Sudan’s foreign ministry Ali al-Sadek blasted the US and other countries for portraying his government as the stumbling block to the deployment of the heavy support package.

Sudan has agreed in April, after months of stalling, to the second phase of the AU-UN hybrid force known as heavy support package consisting of 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with six attack helicopters and other equipment.

Al-Sadek said that the most important step is for the UN Security Council to authorize funding of the African Union forces so that African nations can come forward to donate troops to the joint UN-AU mission. He also added that the tripartite commission formed in accordance with the Addis Abbaba communiqué has proven very effective in resolving these issues. Al-Sadek stressed that it is up to the UN Secretary General to follow through on the financial commitments of the world body outlined in the Addis Abbaba communiqué.

The U.K., France and the U.S. have met with the UN Secretary General last week to express their concern about the slow progress in deploying the UN troops as part of the second phase of the hybrid force. Analysts say that Western nations are concerned that Khartoum is not serious about following through on its commitments.

Darfur: Brownback's Divestment

From the Washington Post

Republican presidential hopeful Sam Brownback released financial disclosure forms yesterday showing that the senator from Kansas has sold off tens of thousands of dollars in mutual fund holdings to avoid investing in companies that do business with Sudan.

Brownback has been an outspoken critic of the violence in Darfur.

He was the first presidential candidate to make public a financial disclosure report that was required to be filed with the Federal Election Commission yesterday. Several candidates, including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona on the Republican side and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York among the Democrats, sought and received 45-day extensions for the filings.

Other candidates filed their forms but said they will let the FEC make them public after a standard review period.

Brownback's forms listed sales of nearly two dozen investments, several of which were mutual funds whose holdings include companies active in Sudan. Among them was a mutual fund in the name of Brownback's wife valued at $50,000 to $100,000. Other Sudan-related investments were in the names of the couple's children.

Brownback also listed a blind trust held jointly with his wife that is valued at $1 million to $5 million.

Uganda: UN Aid Chief Says Security Improved

From Reuters

The security situation in northern Uganda has improved beyond recognition since peace talks to end 20 years of civil war began last July, the new U.N. aid chief said on Tuesday.

John Holmes is on his first visit to the region ravaged by an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands and driven some 1.7 million more into squalid camps.

"The security situation has clearly improved out of all recognition," Holmes said in front of mud huts in a resettlement site for the uprooted villagers in Labworomor.

"People are thinking about beginning going home. We have an opportunity to try and make this a success story."

On-off peace talks between the government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels produced a truce last August that has largely held, giving many of the uprooted in the north confidence to move closer to their homes.

Holmes' predecessor Jan Egeland took an active part in the peace process, regularly calling rebel commanders and last November making a trip to visit LRA leader Joseph Kony on the border between Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo.

"I don't think I need to get involved in the same way that my predecessor did," Holmes said, adding that the U.N. envoy for the talks, former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano, was seeing success alongside mediators from other nations.

Zimbabwe: Why Africa Won't Rein In Mugabe

From the Christian Science Monitor - via POTP

When African leaders nominated Zimbabwe – a country with 2,200 percent inflation, looming famine, and authoritarian tendencies – to chair the UN Commission for Sustainable Development this past week, they may have been sending the world a message.

By giving Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe the yearlong chairmanship, Africa has signaled defiance of the West, which has attemptedto isolate Zimbabwe for alleged human rights abuses and economic mismanagement.

Many African nations have grown increasingly frustrated by the development policies of Western donors that they see as intrusive and harsh. When Australia cancels a cricket tour to Zimbabwe, as it did this week, or when the European Union refuses to hold an EU-Africa summit, as it has for the past six years, because of Mr. Mugabe, many Africans see the pressure as neocolonial habits that must be broken. For many across the continent, Mugabe's muscular land confiscation from white farmers and talk of social justice still have appeal.

"This is African brinkmanship with the West," says Peter Kagwanja, a senior researcher for the Human Sciences Research Council in Tshwane (formerly Pretoria). "Many African nations are still struggling to get over the economic and political legacy of past colonial and racist regimes, and so they are more or less sympathetic with the bold moves taken by Zimbabwe," moves that "they are not capable of doing themselves."

While most African leaders recognize that following Zimbabwe's anti-Western stance would be an act of economic suicide, Mr. Kagwanja says that Africa is throwing its support behind Zimbabwe to show its disinclination to be pushed around by the powerful West. In practice, this means that the nomination of Zimbabwe for the UN agency this year is just the beginning. "All these things that come up, Zimbabwe will be promoted as Africa's choice," he says.

Why Mugabe resonates in Africa

"The resonance behind what Mugabe says is a result of what Africans see as the duplicity of the Western international institutions" such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, says Chris Maroleng, a top Zimbabwe expert at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane. There is anger over "the imposition of the conditions on aid," he says.

But while he understands the reasons for this gap between Africa and the West, he sees the selection of Zimbabwe to head the UN Commission for Sustainable Development as a mistake. "By hoisting the mantle of a known autocrat and dictator in order to make a statement is regrettable. Certainly there is a need for more African voices on development issues. But I don't think that Mugabe is that poster boy."

For the West, Zimbabwe is a pariah nation. British newspapers regularly refer to Mugabe as "Mad Bob," and Australia said Monday it would spend $15 million backing Mugabe's critics, just a day after banning the cricket tour. But for many in Africa, Mugabe is something of a hero. He's seen as a man who took land away from whites whose ancestors swindled or stole the land from blacks nearly a century ago.

This is not the first time Africa has shown its independence on matters of international import. Over the past decade, African leaders have welcomed Chinese development loans, which, unlike those of the World Bank, don't make aid conditional on economic or political reforms. In its year-long stint on the UN Security Council, South Africa has voted against sanctioning Burma and Zimbabwe for their human rights records and backed Iran's efforts to avoid sanctions because of its uranium-enrichment programs.

At a March 28 conference of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, South African President Thabo Mbeki called for African unity above all.

"The fight against Zimbabwe is a fight against us all. Today it is Zimbabwe; tomorrow it will be South Africa, it will be Mozambique, it will be Angola, it will be any other African country. And any government that is perceived to be strong and to be resistant to imperialists would be made a target and would be undermined. So let us not allow any point of weakness in the solidarity of SADC, because that weakness will also be transferred to the rest of Africa."

At the end of the conference, African leaders threw their unanimous support behind Zimbabwe's Mugabe and called on Mr. Mbeki (not the West) to mediate between Mugabe and the political opposition. Leaders who had been critical of Mugabe before the conference, including Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, fell silent.

Darfur: Eight Months After The Passage of Resolution 1706

The latest from Eric Reeves

Is there a substitute for robust international military protection of Darfur’s civilians, as well as for the humanitarians who labor heroically to provide them with critically needed food, medical care, and resources for clean water? In the short term, the answer is clearly no. For the longer term, there must of course be a peace---a just peace, with adequate compensation, fair representation, and guaranteed security for those who wish to begin the arduous process of resuming agriculturally productive lives. But peace is a long, long way off. Indeed, there is no credible peace process underway and the international community seems confused and divided on how to proceed. There is no clear focus for diplomatic energies, nor any sign that Khartoum is prepared to do anything but exploit the present chaos to maximum effect in preserving a grim genocide by attrition.

The most useful recent overview of the prospects for peace comes in the form of a report from the International Crisis Group (“Darfur: Revitalizing the Peace Process,” April 30, 2007, at http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4769&l=1). This lucid and detailed account takes a comprehensive view of the difficult issues outstanding in the wake of the ill-conceived Darfur Peace Agreement (Abuja, May 2006), the divisions within rebel ranks, the various regional actors, domestic Sudanese politics, and the relation of peace in Darfur to peace in southern Sudan, demonstrating yet again that the two are inextricably bound together. The report deserves close and attentive reading, especially by the Bush administration, which is presently led by the unskilled (and half-time) diplomatic lightweight Andrew Natsios. This is especially true since useful assistance from the State Department seems virtually non-existent.

But as cogent as the ICG report is in outlining the difficulties for a peace process that will inevitably take many months, some of the most acute observations have bearing on the immediate security crisis.

Speaking of the Khartoum regime (the “National Congress Party” [NCP]), ICG notes the ruling junta has,

“sought to present a thin veneer of Darfur Peace Agreement implementation, coupled with rhetoric about regional peace, while pursuing simultaneously three deadly policies. These are first, to undermine the rebellion and stability in the region through divide-and-rule tactics, such as incitement of tribal groups and militias, and unilateral negotiations with field commanders and senior rebels, particularly in and around Jebel Marra. Secondly, the regime continues to pursue a military strategy aimed at defeating the rebels, despite evidence that the war is not winnable and with disregard for devastating civilian consequences. Thirdly, the National Congress Party continues to block an effective international role, doing just enough to escape meaningful sanctions, without actually changing its policies, particularly on deployment of the hybrid AU/UN force.” (page 6)

The “divide-and-rule tactics” referred to here are confirmed in an important dispatch from Jebel Marra by The Independent (UK):

“The divide-and-rule policy in Darfur has intensified following the signing of last year's peace agreement. The factions of the SLA which backed the peace deal have been rewarded with weapons and power. ‘It is not only divide and rule---it is divide and destroy,’ said Hamid Ali Nur, a Darfur expert. ‘The government is continuing to create this conflict by giving money and arms to different groups.’” (April 30, 2007)

This extravagant use of national wealth to fund inter-ethnic and inter-tribal violence has been one of the hallmarks of National Islamic Front war-making strategy since the regime came to power by military coup in June 1989, deposing an elected government, and deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising chance for a north/south peace agreement since independence in 1956.

Just as ominously, ICG notes that,

“The Janjaweed continue to play a lead role in the military strategy used against non-signatory rebel groups. The fact that the National Congress Party has put Nafie Ali Nafie in charge of the Darfur file, replacing Magzoub al-Khalifa, underlines that it views resolution of the conflict through a security, not a political, lens.” (page 7)

With this latter point about Nafie ICG is dead-on, and the evidence of such a view of the Janjaweed within the Khartoum junta is confirmed everywhere in Darfur. Nor is it difficult to understand why the regime brazenly persists in using this brutal militia force as its primary instrument of ethnically-targeted civilian destruction. It is almost three years since the UN Security Council “demanded” that Khartoum disarm the Janjaweed and brings its leaders to justice (UN Security Council Resolution 1556, July 30, 2004). This “demand” has meant nothing, and Khartoum has responded only by recycling Janjaweed members into other paramilitary guises. Khartoum’s contemptuous defiance of recent International Criminal Court warrants---one for the arrest of a National Islamic Front official, the other for an especially brutal Janjaweed leader---tells us all we need to know about how the regime is responding to present international pressures.

SPOTLIGHT ON CHINA

Absent pressure from China, there is nothing to suggest that near-term pressures---economic or diplomatic---will change the survivalist calculations of Khartoum’s ruthless génocidaires. For just this reason, China has become the target of a rapidly growing international campaign to shame Beijing for hosting the “Genocide Olympics” in summer 2008. Yet so far the Chinese regime has merely gone through the motions of responding to the Darfur genocide. A plea from the Chinese foreign ministry that Khartoum show more “flexibility” with respect to deployment of UN forces has changed nothing in Khartoum’s outlook or behavior. And following this ostensible plea for “flexibility,” Beijing sent Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun to Darfur to offer the following scripted account of realities in specifically prepared camps:

“My general impression is that the current situation in Darfur is basically stable, the local government runs normally, the refugee camps are well managed with sound health conditions and the basic living of refugees is guaranteed. [ ] According to the local people, the security situation in Darfur is generally improved, especially after the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement and crimes decreased considerably." (Transcript of Chinese Foreign Ministry, April 12, 2007)

This account of course comports with none of what is being reported by either the UN or nongovernmental organizations. China has simply airbrushed away Darfur’s genocidal realities, sending to Khartoum the signal that while international pressures may oblige some public posturing, there is no danger of Beijing’s acceding to any assessment of conditions in Darfur that would require truly urgent and robust action by the Security Council. This is all the encouragement that Khartoum requires from its largest supplier of weapons, its largest economic partner, and its source of unstinting diplomatic muscle at the UN.

Darfur falls further into overwhelming catastrophe, and there remains nothing to slow the descent.

Darfur: Fugitives From Genocide Will Be Denied Sanctuary

From the Times Online - via POTP

When Ibrahim Saadeldin fled Darfur three years ago, staggering into the night after Janjawid militias destroyed his village and killed his siblings, he never imagined that he would end up in an Israeli jail.

The 29-year-old African spent more than a year in a local detention centre as Israel has wrestled with an increasingly uncomfortable problem: how should a country created as a haven for Jews after the Holocaust cope with refugees from a modern-day genocide?

Mr Saadeldin was picked up by border guards, who found him dehydrated and bleeding from days in the desert and a final climb over Israel’s barbed-wire border with Egypt.

He is one of about 400 Sudanese refugees who have made such a journey in the past three years, sneaking across the border only to be arrested in Israel as infiltrators from an enemy state.

The Government says that it must treat all Sudanese as potential security threats. As citizens of an enemy state they cannot stay, Israel says. But human rights groups say that Israel has a special obligation to these refugees, comparing their plight to that of Jews who sought sanctuary after the Second World War.

In the absence of a definitive policy, Israel has adopted a patchwork approach, sending about 120 Sudanese to prison, confining 200 more to kibbutzim and finding minimum-wage work for the remaining 80. Faced with the prospect of hundreds more refugees as the crisis worsens in Darfur, the Government is looking for a more permanent solution.

According to a draft deal reportedly being brokered with the United Nations, Israel would grant refugee status to 90 Sudanese who have already arrived here from Darfur. The remaining 300 or so would be deported to countries identified by the UN. Israel would refuse to accept any more Sudanese, turning those who arrive here over to UN custody.

“At the end of the day, we’re appreciative of their plight,” said Miri Eisen, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office. “But just because we are the only Western democracy they can arrive at by foot, we don’t want to suddenly become the focus for providing all of the solutions,” she said.

“We are a Jewish country. Does that mean we resolve all of the world’s problems?”

The problem, according to case workers at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is that there are very few countries willing to open their doors to the Sudanese. Any deal that precludes Israel from absorbing further refugees would set a dangerous precedent, they say.

Many, like Mr Saadeldin, fled Khartoum by lorry, seeking shelter in Egypt initially. But they faced further persecution, which in Mr Saadeldin’s case, included jail and torture.

His pregnant wife was among 27 Sudanese killed by Egyptian police during a refugee protest in Cairo in 2005, he said. “The police took me away in a bus. From the window I saw my wife’s body on the street. Her face was beaten and bloody. She was dead,” he said.

He escaped to Israel on foot, with only the clothes on his back, a pencil and can of cola.

After spending a year in jail, the UN found him work at a kibbutz in northern Israel. He earns a little more than £2 an hour picking potatoes and carrots. “Every day I pray to stay,” he said. “I will never be able to return to my home. This is the next best thing.”

Darfur: China Calls for Dialogue to Resolve Crisis

From the AP

China urged dialogue as the way to resolve the Darfur crisis as it defended its continued involvement Tuesday in the war-torn region.

China has been "playing a constructive role in getting these problems settled," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

"We hope to press ahead with relevant parties to solve this issue peacefully and properly," she said at a regular briefing. "Dialogue and consultation are the correct and effective way to solve the Darfur issue."

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since February 2003, when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Khartoum government. Sudanese authorities responded by unleashing both the military and government-backed rebels.

The government of China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports and sells the African country weapons and military aircraft, has been widely criticized for not using its influence to do more to stop the bloodshed in Darfur.

As a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Beijing has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur without Sudanese consent.

Chinese-funded dams and other projects have also said to be potentially threatening to Africa's environment and local populations. One such project is the Merowe dam in Sudan, which rights groups say is forcing 70,000 people from their homes in the Nile Valley into the Nubian desert.

But Jiang said that China has attached "great importance" to the effects of the work and that cooperation between the two sides is based on "equality and mutual benefit."

"The construction of that dam is very important to improving people's livelihood and it helps to improve people's living standards," she said.

Her comments a week after a group of U.S. politicians demanded Beijing step up its efforts to persuade Khartoum to stop the bloodletting in Darfur.

"We hope that the congressmen of the United States can understand correctly China's position on the Darfur issue and the efforts China has been making," Jiang said. "We believe that the settlement of the Darfur issue should be based on the respect of the sovereignty of the government of Sudan and it should be settled peacefully."

Darfur: EU Approves 40 Million Euro Aid for AU

From AFP

EU foreign ministers on Monday gave the green light for a 40-million euro aid package to the African Union peacekeeping force in the troubled Sudanese province of Darfur, EU officials said.

For the money to be released, the decision must still be approved at a meeting between EU and foreign ministers from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations in Brussels on May 25.

This is because the 40 million euros would in effect be pulled out of unused European development funds which are co-managed by the EU and the ACP.

The European Union has already handed out 400 million euros worth of funding to the African mission in Somalia (AMIS), including 240 million euros from a special African peace fund which is now empty.

CAR: Rebels Surrender/U.N. Must Repair Roads to Deliver Aid

From AFP

Several former armed rebels have surrendered to the authorities in the Central African Republic over the past fews day in the troubled north of the country, the president's office said on Monday.

Neither the name of the rebel group nor the number of ex-fighters who gave themselves up in the north, a hotbed of resistance to the regime of President Francois Bozize, was announced in a statement read on national radio.

"The fighters involved in a political-military movement... left their base in successive waves and were found in Kaga-Bandoro where they were placed under the protection of different state services," the communique said.

A source close to the presidency said that "several dozen fighters" had surrendered in the region about 400km north of the capital Bangui.

Armed groups opposed to Bozize, who came to power in a 2003 military coup, have been active in the north-west of the country over the last two years, which has led to numerous deaths and the displacement of more than 280 000 people, according to the United Nations.

The country's army has also been accused of violent acts against civilians in the north.

According to the presidency's statement, some rebels have responded to Bozize's call last month to lay down their arms and to presidential aides who were sent to the region "to bring a message of reconciliation and material support to the former rebel fighters".

From Reuters

Roads and bridges in Central African Republic are in such disrepair that the United Nations must fix them before delivering food aid to thousands of people, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

The WFP is seeking to boost its emergency food rations to 230,000 people, but will need $3.5 million in additional donor funds over the next nine months to repair roads and bridges, as well as $25 million for the food itself.

"The conflict in Central African Republic has brought the private sector almost to a complete halt," Simon Pluess, spokesman for the U.N. agency, told a Geneva news conference. "The current infrastructure cannot cope with the scope of our operations," he said.

Many who have fled fighting in the northwest of the country are living in the bush and subsisting on wild roots and berries, Pluess said.

Central African Republic, a landlocked former French colony, ranks near the bottom of almost all development rankings. Its ill-resourced government has control of little beyond the capital Bangui and banditry is rife.

The U.N. children's agency UNICEF has said the country faces a growing humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a million people -- a quarter of the population -- disrupted by civil and regional warfare involving various rebel groups.

Somalia: Crisis Worse than Darfur

From The Telegraph

The crisis faced by up to 400,000 people fleeing fighting in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is "worse than Darfur", the United Nations' humanitarian chief said yesterday.

Aid agencies calculate that almost a third of the city's population has fled in the past two months as clashes flared between Islamic militants and troops of the transitional government.

"In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year," said John Holmes, a former British diplomat and now the UN's emergency humanitarian co-ordinator.

In Darfur, more than two million civilians have fled their villages since the war erupted more than four years ago.

But the speed and size of the exodus from Mogadishu has eclipsed the emergency in the western Sudanese province, where there are established camps run by international aid agencies. There are no such camps in Somalia, an east African country already on its knees after 16 years of clan fighting and no central government.

Most of those who have fled in recent weeks, including women, children and the elderly, are camping in fields in areas surrounding Mogadishu, without access to food, shelter, clean water or medicines.

The few medical relief agencies operating in the region, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have reported fears of cholera outbreaks.

"We are only reaching maybe 35 to 40 per cent of those in need because of difficulties of access and security and of our presence on the ground," Mr Holmes said in Nairobi yesterday.

The flight from Mogadishu took place amid a sustained barrage of heavy shelling in civilian areas from both Somalia's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, and Islamic rebels allied with disgruntled Somali clan fighters.

"Clearly there are major problems with the way these attacks were carried out, clearly major abuses went on," said Mr Holmes.

Uganda: Museveni Faces LRA Dilemma

From IWPR

Faced with resolving a 20-year-long revolt in his northern provinces, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni is trying to decide between supporting an international court case against rebel leaders or reaching a gentleman's agreement with them in the hope that this might hasten peace.

In 2003, Museveni invited the fledgling International Criminal Court, ICC, the world's first permanent international war crimes tribunal, to investigate alleged crimes against humanity committed by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA.

But he then infuriated officials at the ICC headquarters, thousands of kilometres away in The Hague, with a policy flip-flop last July in which he offered an amnesty to the LRA leaders, including the rebel chief Joseph Kony, in return for a peace deal.

The LRA and government forces have been engaged since 1986 in a war that has taken an estimated 100,000 lives. As many as 1.6 million people - mainly from the Acholi ethnic group of northern Uganda - live in displacement, or internal refugee camps, where nearly a thousand die each week from disease or violence.

The LRA has abducted more than 20,000 children. Boys have been used as guerrilla fighters, whilegirls have become sex slaves as well as combatants. The economic, social and political development of northern Uganda has been severely set back, but there has also been a knock-on effect throughout the country, where budgets have been affected, urban migration has increased and slums have grown.

With the bi-annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, scheduled to be held in Uganda in late November this year, President Museveni faces a severe dilemma as he seeks to cast his country in the best possible light to the international community and to the hordes of foreign journalists who will descend on his country.

Will he seek to bury the past by pursuing a compromise peace deal with Kony and the LRA? Or will he renew his original request - still on the books at the ICC - to have the LRA leaders prosecuted at The Hague?

The continued unrest caused by the northern conflict has raised fears that the government will be unable to provide security for Queen Elizabeth - Head of the Commonwealth since ascending to the throne of Britain in 1952 - and Commonwealth heads of state when they arrive in Kampala, Uganda's capital, to attend the summit.

Reports in the British media suggest that CHOGM could be shifted to Canada or South Africa because of insecurity in northern Uganda and other parts of the country.

ICC prosecutors have conducted investigations into atrocities alleged to have been committed by the LRA, and in October 2005 ICC judges issued warrants for the arrests of the top leaders of the rebel group - Kony; his deputy Vincent Otti; Okot Odhiambo; Dominic Ongwen; and Raska Lukwiya, subsequently shot dead, in August last year, in a battle between Ugandan soldiers and LRA guerrillas.

The ICC has no police force of its own that it can use to apprehend suspects, but under the court's founding 1998 Statute of Rome - which sets out the institution's strict rules and guidelines - it is beholden upon states that have ratified the Rome treaty to make arrests. Neighbouring states that are signatories are also obliged to assist.

By entering into peace talks and offering amnesties from domestic prosecution, Museveni is in direct breach of Uganda's treaty obligations. "Museveni is acting in contravention of international law," Justice Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, told IWPR. "His government signed the Rome Statute, and offers of amnesty violate the letter of the law."

But the dilemma confronting Museveni is a tough one when the northern citizens of his country, especially the Acholi, are desperate for peace by any means after having been persecuted by a rebel militia for more than two decades.

Genocide: Thousands Attend Burial of Bosnian War Victims

From Reuters

Thousands of Bosnian Muslims attended the burial on Saturday of almost 100 of their ethnic kin killed by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries at the outbreak of the 1992-95 war.

Amid heavy security they gathered in sweltering heat in a field at the entrance to Bratunac after Serbs, who now make up the town's overwhelming majority, opposed the burial near a newly-renovated mosque in the town centre.

Dozens of Bosnian Serb police stood guard as mourners prayed in rows.

Family members, relatives, friends and senior Muslim religious and political figures carried 94 coffins draped in green cloth to the final resting places of the victims, whose bodies were found in several mass graves.

Among those buried were about a dozen women and children.

"We are sad but at least both we and them can now have some peace because their bodies have been found and we now have a place to go and pray for them," said 50-year-old Hajrudin Memisevic, who buried his brother and nephew.

The mosque's imam, killed in 1992, will be buried on Sunday in front of the mosque.

About 600 Bosnian Muslims were killed after Serbs captured the eastern town in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing". Before the war, Bratunac was home to about 25,000 Muslims, a two-thirds majority. More than 400 bodies are still missing.

A further more than 2,000 were killed in nearby Srebrenica after fleeing to the U.N. "safe area" which was later overrun.

Sudan: At Least 54 People Killed in Attack in South

From the AP

At least 54 people, mostly women and children, have been killed and 11 others injured in a recent attack by cattle raiders in southern Sudan, two English-language newspapers have reported.

The English-language daily the Khartoum Monitor, which focuses largely on southern issues, reported Monday that heavily armed members of the Toposa tribe near the Sudanese-Kenya border attacked the village of Lauro Payam, killing 49 women and children and five men and injuring several more.

The Commissioner of Budi County, Oreste Lopara, said in a statement that the attacks occurred on May 4, according to the Sudan Tribune. Lopara said two Sudan People's Liberation Army companies accompanied him to the area to assess the damages and restore calm, according to the paper.

The SPLA, ethnic African non-Muslims, fought a 2-decades-long war against the mainly Arab central government in Khartoum that ended three years ago. The conflict, separate from the violence in Darfur, Western Sudan, was blamed for more than 2 million deaths, primarily from war-induced famine and disease.

Southern Sudan has its own regional government under the 2004 comprehensive peace agreement that ended the civil war. Under the agreement, the region can hold a referendum in 2011 on whether to become an independent country.

Chad: Strike Goes Almost Unnoticed

From Reuters

In most countries, a nationwide strike at schools, universities, hospitals and ministries would pretty much paralyse daily life.

But public services in Chad have been neglected for so long and are in such a run-down state that it is hard to tell that a major labour stoppage is actually under way.

In a desperate bid to force the government to raise their salaries, public service workers are holding a general strike -- nearing the end of its second week -- which they say they will renew indefinitely until their conditions are met.

"When you look at people's faces in this country, they are etched with misery. We don't have even the minimum of things a human being can expect," said Montanan Ndinaromtan, a union leader and lab technician at N'Djamena's main hospital.

Landlocked Chad is one of Africa's newest oil producers, sending some 160,000 barrels per day by pipeline to Cameroon's Atlantic coast. But President Idriss Deby's government has been struggling to fight off an armed rebellion in the east and cope with thousands of refugees from Sudan's war-torn Darfur.

The former French colony remains one of the world's poorest countries, ranked 171 out of 177 in the U.N. development index, which rates states on criteria such as average income, life expectancy and literacy.

"Our salaries are gone in one week. We cannot afford to feed our children, to educate them, or build even a one-room house. So we're asking for better living conditions," Ndinaromtan said.

A slow trickle of patients continued to arrive for treatment at the N'Djamena hospital: skeleton emergency services are still operating. But strike or no strike, the view that greets visitors is pretty much the same.

Exhausted relatives are slumped on corridor floors swatting at flies. Patients lie listlessly on filthy mattresses, waiting for doctors who come late or not at all.

A patient with multiple fractures has a plastic bag filled with stones hanging off his toe: traction; Chadian-style.

"Look at the conditions in which Chadians live," Ndinaromtan said. "Nothing is working anyway, the strike does not make much difference." The oil industry was not affected by the stoppage.

Public workers are demanding a substantial increase to their pension and indemnity payments, which will effectively increase salaries by some 300 per cent.

So far the government has only offered a 10 per cent rise.

"Chad is not poor. It's a question of management and Chad is very poorly managed," said Djibrine Assali Hamdallah, secretary general of the UST grouping of unions.

"The country has many resources such as oil -- it has never had as much money as it has now."

It is almost four years since Chad started pumping oil, but most people have yet to see any benefit, unions say.

"Oil money should at least help people a bit -- some of it should trickle down through to schools or hospitals," said Dr Antoinette Moulbaye, an English professor at the University of N'Djamena and vice president of a teaching union.

A university professor for 30 years, Moulbaye lives in a house with no road, no piped water and no mains electricity. "I should at least be living like a middle class person," he said.

Conditions in Chad's schools are just as grim as in hospitals. Classrooms which once held 20 children now have ten times that many squeezed into them as investment failed to keep up with population growth.

Teachers admit it is unfortunate they have had to strike just as end-of-year exams approach, but say they were forced into a corner after the government recently received more than $400 million in oil taxes, with more to come in June.

"The government has just received massive amounts of money, which is being used for other purposes such as buying arms. If we wait until September this money will already be spent. So we must act now," said technology teacher Dr Malloum Soultan.