Away

I am going to be away and unable to post until after July 4th, so please check out Passion of the Present and ENOUGH for the latest news.

Darfur: Climate Change Only One Cause Among Many

A lengthy article from IRIN

Understanding all the causes of the Darfur crisis may need a more nuanced approach. Julie Flint, who with Alex de Waal, wrote the book Darfur: The Short History of a Long War, told IRIN, "There is some truth in this [the link between conflict and the demand for natural resources]. The great drought and famine of 1984-85 led to localised conflicts that generally pitted pastoralists against farmers in a struggle for diminishing resources, culminating in the Fur-Arab war of 1987-89."

But attempts to paint the Darfur conflict as simply resource-based "whitewashes the Sudan government", claimed Flint. The "full-fledged tragedy" starting in 2003, was caused by the government's response to the rebellion, "for which two people have already been indicted for war crimes by the ICC [International Criminal Court] - not by resource conflict".

The ODI's O'Callaghan listed a range of causes for the conflict, none of which a sole or primary cause: "Historical grievances, local perceptions of race, demands for a fair sharing of power between different groups, the inequitable distribution of economic resources and benefits, disputes over access to and control over increasingly scarce natural resources (land, livestock and water), the proliferation of arms and the militarisation of young people, the absence of a democratic process and other governance issues ... Local issues have been politicised and militarised, and drawn into the wider political dynamics of Sudan," she commented.

Geoffrey Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Programme at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, noted that "competition between pastoralists and agriculturalists is key to so many conflicts in East Africa, including the crisis in Darfur. Violence between tribes and ethnic groups are the most visible dividing lines, but the stories of these conflicts cannot be told without including underlying environmental and demographic stresses."

Darfur: Peacekeepers Face Little Peace to Keep

From Reuters

United Nations and African Union peacekeepers headed for Sudan's Darfur region stand little chance of success without a robust peace agreement, observers warn, and could end up becoming scapegoats for ongoing violence.

Prospects could be even worse for AU peacekeepers headed into Somalia, where diplomats see little peace to keep.

Sudan this month agreed to allow hybrid UN/AU force of 20,000 peacekeepers into Darfur, replacing a weak AU mission that observers say did little to halt the violence.

The co-author of a U.N. resolution mandating the hybrid operation, Britain's ambassador to the U.N. Emyr Jones Parry, said on Wednesday he expected to finalise the draft this week and it could come to a vote next week.

Speaking earlier to Reuters in London, Jones Parry said the hybrid force, unlike the AU mission, would, crucially, have a mandate robust enough to cover the protection of civilians.

"Secondly, there will be enough of them to cover the country and with the equipment and the flexibility to get around much more easily," he said last week.

International experts say some 200,000 people have died and about 2.5 million been displaced in four years of fighting. Sudan denies U.S. accusations of genocide and says only 9,000 are dead.

Not all of Darfur's disparate rebel groups -- mainly non-Arabic tribesmen who accuse the Sudanese government of ignoring the region -- signed up to a peace deal reached a year ago and aid workers say violence is increasing again and it is becoming harder to tell who is behind it.

"There has been this concentration on getting peacekeepers in but what we really need is a proper peace deal," said former UN undersecretary general Mark Malloch Brown. "Without it, it will be very difficult."

The 20,000 peacekeepers will be spread across an area roughly the size of France.

As with the U.N. military mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- another vast, violence ridden country -- analysts warn there will be areas from which they are largely absent where civilians will be largely unprotected.

"The hybrid force, if it is deployed without agreement between the parties, will not be able to stop the fighting and will become a scapegoat for the attacks on civilians," said Francois Grignon, Africa project director for the International Crisis Group think tank.

The chances for a successful intervention in the face of opposition either from the rebels or from Khartoum -- accused of backing militias who rape and murder -- were low, he said.

Taking the fight to poorly trained rebels, peacekeepers were able to largely halt civil war in Sierra Leone but Darfur was a much more complex situation spread over a much larger area, Grignon said, and serious U.N. fighting was not an option.

An expected delay in deploying a mission could turn out to be a good thing, however. A senior U.N. official said on Wednesday it could take six months.

"This time can be used to obtain the necessary provisions to come back to the table for negotiations," Grignon said. "The force is not a waste of time -- far from it -- but it is only one piece of the puzzle."

Parry Jones said stability could be achieved by completing the political process alongside deployment of the troops.

"People will go home, you can get some economic activity and a degree of normality that we have not seen in Darfur for a very long time," he said. Asked if that could happen by the year-end, he said yes.

Observers are much less optimistic about the prospects successful peacekeeping in Somalia, scene of a failed US and UN mission in the 1990s and where Ethiopian soldiers and a fledgling African union mission are working to support the provisional government.

Western diplomats say for now there is simply no peace for the Ugandan AU peacekeepers and troops from Burundi who will join them to keep.

"It depends on how much the African Union can stabilise things," Jones Parry said. "What the (U.N.) department for peacekeeping is looking at is contingency plans."

The International Crisis Group says the international community is still too divided over what it wants for Somalia and peacekeepers backing the government are not well received.

"The population of southern Somalia is going to see more and more the African mission as an accomplice to a government not representative of their own interests," said Grignon. "The international community has to decide what endgame it wants for Somalia."

Darfur: U.N. Resolution Expected

From the AP

Two members of the U.N. Security Council _ Britain and Ghana _ are expected to introduce a resolution this week to authorize a joint U.N.-African Union force to help end the four-year conflict in Darfur, Britain's U.N. ambassador said Wednesday.

Emyr Jones Parry said he hopes the resolution will be adopted by the Security Council a week after it's introduced, although other council members weren't certain about such speedy approval.

The proposed 23,000-strong U.N.-AU hybrid force is the final phase of a three-stage U.N. plan to bolster a beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force that has been unable to stop fighting between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia.

The violence has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million since 2003.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir agreed to the package in November but stalled acceptance of the first two phases and backtracked on allowing U.N. troops in Darfur until April. Earlier this month, the Sudanese government agreed to the hybrid force after receiving certain assurances.

Jones Parry told the Security Council on Tuesday that during meetings with council members earlier this month in Khartoum, al-Bashir and other top officials expressed "total unconditional acceptance" of the hybrid force. "We will hold him to what he told us," Jones Parry told The Associated Press.

Hedi Annabi, the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, briefed the Security Council Wednesday on preparations for the hybrid operation now that there is an agreement between the AU, U.N. and Sudan. He said a meeting for potential troop contributors will be held Friday.

Pressed later about published reports that al-Bashir has said Sudan wouldn't accept any Western troops in the hybrid force, Annabi told reporters: "We should all decide to have some hearing problems, because reacting to this or that statement may not be helpful."

"What we need to focus on now is implementation and deeds rather than words," he said.

The U.N. and AU have pledged to make every effort to find African troops for the force, but the agreement says if they can't do that, they will have to use personnel from other countries.

Annabi told reporters that council members want a precise timeline for deployment of the hybrid force, but he couldn't give them one "because a lot of factors are not in our hands." He said he hoped the force could be deployed within six months after the resolution is adopted.

"We do not control the speed at which troop contributors will make offers for the hybrid, or will be ready to deploy with the necessary equipment," he said.

The first phase of the U.N. plan was a "light support package" for the AU force that is being delivered. In April, Sudan agreed to the second phase, a "heavy support package," which will pave the way for the hybrid operation.

Annabi said the U.N. peacekeeping department has offers for everything it needs for the "heavy support package," which includes 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with aircraft and other equipment. It is now trying to expedite their deployment.

When the "heavy support package" deploys, 2,200 U.N. military personnel and several hundred international police will join the 7,000 AU troops on the ground in Darfur, Annabi said.

That means for the hybrid force, about 15,000 additional people will be needed _ 10,000 troops and 5,000 support units and other personnel, he said.

Darfur: Six Peacekeeping Essentials

From ENOUGH

Headlines this month are heralding the news that the Sudanese government has agreed –- again -– to the deployment of a U.N./A.U. hybrid peacekeeping mission for Darfur. However, the Khartoum regime’s agreement is proving to be riddled with conditions and footnotes, and within days of agreeing to the mission, President Omer al-Bashir has publicly recanted his acceptance before audiences in Khartoum.

Sadly, this is nothing new. The Khartoum regime's record of implementing agreements is poor at best, and the international community has done little to challenge Khartoum's inaction.

This time, Khartoum's wavering agreement can be translated into good news for the people of Darfur -- if and only if the international community moves swiftly to: protect civilians in Darfur and the neighboring countries affected by the crisis; promote a serious peace process; and punish the perpetrators and those that would obstruct civilian protection or the peace. This strategy briefing will focus primarily on immediate protection requirements.

* A. Protect the People
First, several critical factors will determine whether the proposed peacekeeping mission will achieve success and finally fulfill the international community’s responsibility to protect civilians in Darfur. The Sudanese regime will likely balk at each step, but in each case, the international community must push back and ensure that the following six elements of the mission are fully addressed:

1. MANDATE: Civilian protection must be the objective of the deployment of forces to Darfur. The U.N. Security Council and the A.U. Peace and Security Council must authorize a robust Chapter VII mission mandated to protect civilians and humanitarian operations. Anything less will allow Khartoum to continue its assault on the people of Darfur, restrain the movement of relief workers, and give the rebels and the regime further license to escalate the conflict.

2. MANAGEMENT: The United Nations must be responsible for the command and control of the mission. In light of the complexity of forging a hybrid mission comprised of two very different institutions and the need for successful collaboration, the mission should be under U.N. command and control, build on the experience of A.U. forces already on the ground, delineate clear responsibilities for both organizations, and include a transparent mechanism for the two to resolve disagreements that may arise in handling challenges to mandate implementation or mission operations.

3. MANPOWER: Troops should be drawn from throughout the world, not just Africa. Given that current plans call for a mission of 17,500 - 19,500 troops and nearly 4,000 civilian police at a time when the demand for peacekeepers worldwide is on the rise, Africa is running up against limitations on its capacity to supply new troops. Therefore, troops should be drawn from anywhere, not just Africa as the Sudanese have suggested. The international community must move now to identify troop and police contributing countries, and rapidly increase international peacekeeper training programs to ensure that sufficient personnel are available over time.

4. MOBILITY: The troops must be provided with the support necessary to undertake a mobile mission in the challenging terrain of Darfur. Moving a large and diverse force into theater as quickly as possible requires that the international community provide lift for the initial deployment as well as for rotations. Once on the ground, and because the size and terrain of Darfur require a nimble, mobile, and well-equipped force, the international community must ensure that troops are provided with interoperable equipment, ground facilities, sustenance, and logistical and air support.

5. METHODOLOGY: Civilian components of the mission should have equal priority to military elements. In addition to its military and logistical capabilities, the mission will require robust financial support for civilian and political capabilities, including support for human rights monitoring, local dispute resolution, community outreach, and the dissemination of news and information to the public. The need for a dexterous mission able to protect civilians and humanitarian operations also requires that the international community immediately establish systems and mechanisms to share intelligence with the force command on the ground.

6. MONEY: Donors must fully fund civilian protection in Darfur. Though its status as a U.N./A.U. hybrid means that the mission will be funded by assessed contributions to the United Nations, additional resources are required to sustain A.U. forces already on the ground, ensure a smooth transition to the U.N./A.U. hybrid force, and prepare for deployment. The international community must make these funds available immediately – particularly for barracks - in order to avoid any delays in deployment, and ensure that the hybrid is fully and realistically funded immediately upon authorization of the mission by the U.N. Security Council and A.U. Peace and Security Council.

Darfur: Haunting AU as it Aspires to Union Government

From Reuter

African leaders meet this weekend to debate a grand plan for a continental government, but they face pleas for urgent action now to halt conflicts in Darfur and Somalia and tackle enduring poverty.

A summit of the 53-nation African Union starting in Ghana on Sunday has at the top of its agenda a "Grand Debate" on creating a United States of Africa and a federal government to rule it -- a long-held dream of supporters of Pan-African integration.

Organisers are billing the three-day Accra summit as a tribute to Ghana's first post-independence president, Kwame Nkrumah, who became the standard bearer of Pan-African unity when he took over from British colonial rule a half century ago.

But sceptics doubt the practicality of a federal government for Africa after decades of wars, coups and massacres that often reflect ethnic and religious fault lines criss-crossing a vast continent artificially carved up by former colonial rulers.

While most Africans embrace the vision of a united, resource-rich continent of 800 million people able to speak with one voice to the world, campaigners say AU leaders must tackle more pressing problems at their doorstep.

"Darfur should be on the agenda, because it's really, really urgent," said Oury Traore, regional programmes manager for the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), a non-governmental organisation that promotes conflict resolution.

Traore's group wants the AU to make its top priority the protection of civilians in Sudan's western Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in a conflict pitting Sudanese forces and allied militias against local rebels.

"We shouldn't allow room for this kind of insanity any more, in any state," she said.

Civil society groups urged AU leaders to act now to bring peace to Somalia by pressing for a political solution there, and some also urged them to look at Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe is accused of crushing opponents and ruining the economy.

But summit organisers defend the single-item agenda, and deny the plan for a continental government is too ambitious.

"Yes, we have serious problems, people are dying in places like Darfur and Somalia. But people are dying elsewhere in the world, not just in Africa," Ghana's Foreign Minister Nana Akufo Addo said.

Addo said a continent that pooled its resources and spoke with one voice would command greater respect in the world and help Africa shake off the indignity of always being portrayed as a byword for chaos and poverty.

"In the last 20 or 30 years we have a continent that has been bedevilled by conflict of one sort or another, vast migration of many of our young people. That is the Africa we want to stop," he said.

But he recognised disagreements among the AU heads of state about how quickly a federal United States of Africa should be created and how it should be governed.

While some leaders like Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade are vocal advocates of a continental government, others, like South African President Thabo Mbeki, are believed to favour a more gradual approach.

Gaddafi, who often wears clothes emblazoned with the outline of the African continent, has travelled to the summit by land, drumming up support for his unifying vision, which includes a plan to create a 2-million strong African army.

He says Africans will only win respect if they act as a single continent -- a view shared by Nkrumah's son Sekou.

"I think ideally it should be a continental government. The problem is not how we get there, it is that we get there," Sekou Nkrumah told Reuters.

Darfur: Joint AU-UN Road-Map for Political Process

From the Sudan Tribune

Below the text of the joint AU-UN road map for Darfur peace process.

Joint AU-UN Road-map for Darfur Political Process

8 June 2007 — On the basis of the Addis Ababa conclusions of 16 November 2007, AU and UN Special Envoys, Salim Ahmed Salim and Jan Eliasson, have been working closely together and consulted with the parties and a wide range of stakeholders on how to end the Darfur conflict.

The Tripoli Consensus on the political process for Darfur adopted on 29 April 2007 underlined the urgency of finding a comprehensive and sustainable solution to the crisis. Recognizing the value of regional initiatives, the meeting agreed on the need for coordination and convergence of all initiatives under the AU-UN lead.

There is consensus that priority must be given to an all-inclusive political process, under AU and UN leadership. Progress on the political track must be accompanied by an end to widespread violence and insecurity, a strengthened ceasefire supported by an effective peacekeeping force, as well as an improvement in the humanitarian situation and serious prospects for socio-economic recovery in Darfur.

This roadmap for the political process consists of three phases: Convergence of Initiatives and Consultations; Pre-Negotiations; and Negotiations.

As a point of departure for the implementation of the road-map, the AU and UN expect all parties to declare their serious commitment to:

- achieve a political solution to the Darfur crisis;

- create a security environment in Darfur conducive to negotiations;

- participate in and commit to the outcome of the negotiation effort;

- cease all hostilities immediately.

It is expected that the AU Peace and Security Council and the UN Security Council hold all parties accountable to these commitments, with the understanding that obstruction to the peace process will have consequences.

The AU and UN will consult closely with regional actors to ensure exchange of information, coordination and collaboration. The Special Envoys will also utilize the Tripoli format, to ensure maximum coherence and convergence of national, regional and international efforts. The international community’s support to the implementation of this road-map will be coordinated through the AU and UN.

The AU-UN Joint Mediation Support Team (JMST) will support the Special Envoys in the implementation of this roadmap and provide technical and professional back-stopping to the process. The team is being strengthened and JMST staff is being deployed in Khartoum and Darfur to ensure access to all parties to the conflict and be able to undertake extensive contacts with the non-signatories, regional actors and other stakeholders. Mediation and thematic experts on key issues and on logistics will be recruited to support the ongoing efforts.

The JMST will design and implement an effective communication strategy utilizing local, regional and international media and stakeholders to broaden information-sharing on the political process and to build a constituency of support for its outcome.

I. Convergence of Initiatives and Consultations Phase (May-June 2007)

The AU and UN will work with all national, regional and international actors to ensure that all initiatives currently underway converge and are integrated within the broader AU-UN framework by the end of June. Simultaneously, the AU and UN will continue extensive consultations on the political process and parties’ positions with all stakeholders inside and outside Sudan. To this end, the AU and UN will:

i. Support ongoing efforts and coordinate closely with the regional initiative of Chad, Eritrea and Libya which intends to assist the non-signatory movements with the development of an organizational framework and facilitate their preparation on a common platform for renewed talks. This initiative will also serve to prepare the movements for the SPLM conference.

ii. Support and facilitate the work of the SPLM Task Force on Darfur to organize a conference of non-signatory movements. The conference is intended as a mechanism to bring together non-signatory movements, in an effort to foster cohesion among movements in preparation for negotiations.

iii. Work closely together with non-government organizations which have expertise and capacity to contribute to the political process.

iv. Intensify consultations with civil society, tribal leaders and representatives of IDPs, refugees and women’s groups inter alia through the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation preparatory framework. This process will also aim at identifying the concerns and positions of these groups in order to ensure that their views are being taken into account in the pre-negotiation/negotiation phases and to consolidate support for the peace process.

v. Continue to engage with DPA signatories to ensure that their concerns and interests are included in the renewed political process.

vi. Develop a Negotiation Strategy, incorporating lessons learned from the Abuja talks. This strategy will take into consideration the parties’ positions and devise a methodology to include also concerns/views of those who were not represented in the Abuja negotiations.

vii. Continue to actively support the implementation of previous agreements aiming at improving Chad-Sudan relations.

II. Pre-Negotiation Phase (June – July 2007)

All parties are expected to demonstrate a serious commitment to the political process through accelerating preparations for negotiations in good faith. For this, the parties are to:

i. Uphold the ceasefire, including refraining from military build-up or posturing of forces, stopping aerial bombardments, containing the Janjaweed and tribal conflicts through an effective ceasefire mechanism throughout Darfur.

ii. Facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and demonstrate respect for human rights and humanitarian principles. In this regard, all parties are expected to implement the commitments of the Humanitarian Joint Communiqué on the facilitation of Humanitarian Assistance in Darfur of 28 March.

Simultaneously, the AU-UN will continue and finalize consultations with the Government of Sudan, signatories and non-signatories, civil society, tribal leaders and representatives of IDPs, refugees and women’s groups. This process will further refine the Negotiation Strategy including the development of a mechanism to channel views and positions into the final talks. The following actions will be pursued:

i. Enhance cohesion among the parties and broaden the base of support for a political solution to the crisis;

ii. Determine the basic parameters of parties’ positions vis-à-vis existing agreements, and ascertain the parties’ core grievances and positions on key issues, including power-sharing, wealth-sharing and security arrangements.

iii. Intensify engagement between the signatories, non-signatories and the Government of Sudan on the substance of the renewed talks, with the aim of narrowing gaps on divergent positions.

iv. Re-activate the Core Coordination Group to prepare options for including a development perspective into renewed negotiations as an essential complement to the all-inclusive peace process. Current and future assessments and plans will eventually lead to an International Donors Conference.

v. Finalize work on the timeline, format, agenda, content and venue for bringing the parties into direct negotiations. In this regard, the AU and UN will also determine criteria for inviting participants and observers.

vi. Engage key regional actors to reinforce the complementarity of efforts, collaborate and ensure all support to the political process in Darfur is coordinated within the broader AU-UN framework.

III. Negotiation Phase (August 2007)

The implementation of Phase II this road-map should have contributed to narrowing the gaps between the respective positions and determined the parameters of an all-inclusive agreement with broad ownership among all stakeholders. The Special Envoys thus envisage invitations to a brief and intensive negotiation session.

The political process and any ensuing agreement will be supported by the envisaged AU-UN hybrid peacekeeping operation which will be mandated to verify compliance and the implementation of all agreed commitments, as well as to and contribute to the restoration of security and protection of the population of Darfur.

Darfur: Diplomat Urged Stronger Action

From the AP

As a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, Ronald Capps got a close-up view of the destruction taking place in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region and worried that Washington wasn't doing enough to stop what it had itself described as "genocide."

A week before several of Darfur's rebel groups and the Sudanese government signed a tenuous peace deal in May 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria, Capps wrote a cable to the State Department urging more forceful U.S. action, including leading an international military force to replace African Union peacekeepers to halt the bloodshed.

Capps would not discuss the April 28, 2006, cable when asked Wednesday, but The Associated Press independently verified the accuracy of excerpts that first appeared on a Web site devoted to the crisis in Darfur.

Excerpts follow:

___

"Stopping the violence in Darfur will require a military force with first-world leadership, first-world assets, and first-world experience. US and coalition experience in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq is relevant here. Putting together such a coalition and getting it into place to do its work will require that the United States government and our military take a lead role, at least initially. Our NATO and other first-world military partners will not be keen to step forward without our participation, and many of the traditional UN troop contributing countries lack the military capability to successfully complete the mission."

___

"We alone have called the atrocities in Darfur genocide. We must lead the coalition that will stop it. We must demonstrate to the world our resolve and determination to stop this genocide and to never again let genocide occur. We already lead the world in the provision of humanitarian aid to Darfur. We must not cede our leadership at the crucial moment.

"During the Rwandan genocide the United States and others in the international community failed the Tutsis and moderate Hutus who were killed by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the Interahamwe. In 1998 President Clinton went to Rwanda to apologize and said, 'We must never again be shy in the face of evidence.' In Darfur, the evidence is clear. The president of the United States has said so, two secretaries of state have said so."

___

"Some will say that the steps outlined here are impossible. They are not. Certainly the Government of Sudan will resist. This will be a challenge to the nation's sovereignty, perhaps even to the survival of the government. Security Council members will resist.

"But if we fail to properly construct and mandate a Peace Enforcement Force, we will fail to stop the genocide and more people will needlessly die. Yes, it will be hard. But being hard should not deter us from doing what is right. This is genocide. If we are serious about stopping it, this is what it will take. Otherwise, which American president will be the one to apologize to the dead of Darfur?"

Darfur: Senate Panel OKs Boost in U.N. Peacekeeping Funds

From Reuters

The United States would increase the amount it pays for U.N. peacekeeping operations and pay some back dues under a bill approved on Wednesday by a Senate panel.

"At a time when we are seeking a robust U.N. force in Darfur, and are relying on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, we should pay our dues in full," said Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, which passed the bill.

He said the U.N. peacekeeping missions were in locations in which stability was in the U.S. national interest -- such as Haiti, Lebanon, Kosovo and Sudan.

The United Nations assesses U.S. dues at about 27 percent of the U.N. budget, but the United States has been paying only 25 percent. The legislation the Senate panel approved and sent to the floor for a vote would lift that self-imposed cap on payments to the U.N. peacekeeping budget to about 27 percent for calendar years 2006 to 2008. It was sponsored by Biden, a presidential hopeful.

Biden's office said that because of the cap, the United States was $117 million in arrears in its payments to the United Nations for peacekeeping missions.

Congressional appropriators would also have to approve any increased U.S. payments. The relevant Senate panel addresses the issue on Thursday. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who oversees U.N. funding, has said helping meet U.S. obligations to U.N. peacekeeping efforts is a high priority.

CAR: Facing a Precarious Situation

From the UN News Center

The situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) remains extremely precarious, marked by deteriorating humanitarian conditions, repeated violations of human rights, a culture of impunity, a lack of dialogue and tolerance between opposing groups, and persistent poverty and corruption, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns today.

In his latest report on the CAR and the work of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in that country (BONUCA), Mr. Ban calls on the authorities in the CAR to step up their efforts to kick-start intensive political dialogue and push the peace process forward.

“Recent encouraging prospects can be sustained only with continued international cooperation, in a climate of peace,” he writes, noting that recent consultations by the Panel of the Wise, a prominent civil society group, indicate that most key political groups – including rebels – want dialogue.

But some opposition parties are sceptical that the Government of President François Bozizé is genuinely committed to holding dialogue given he has said the security situation must first improve and the talks cannot call into question the legitimacy of institutions set up since elections held in 2005.

Earlier this year, the Government reached peace deals with some of the rebel groups in the northwest and northeast, where most of the fighting has taken place in recent years.

But Mr. Ban stresses that while these accords are welcome, “only through a comprehensive and inclusive dialogue can solid progress towards restoring sustainable stability in the country and attracting investors be made.”

Condemning repeated attacks on humanitarian workers, the Secretary-General says the Government needs to improve its measures to ensure that aid workers receive adequate protection. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) within the CAR is estimated at more than 200,000, while the country is also home to refugees from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan.

But Mr. Ban adds that the economy has made some improvements, with a 4.7 per cent growth rate in 2007, up from 3.8 per cent the previous year, thanks partly to World Bank and International Monetary Fund-backed poverty reduction programmes.

DRC: NGO Suspends Operations Amid Increased Displacement

From IRINt

Violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has forced non-governmental organisations to limit operations in some areas in North and South Kivu, officials said, even as more people are displaced.

On 25 June, armed men wearing military uniforms attacked two vehicles belonging to Solidarité Internationale in Kisharo in the Rutshuru territory of North Kivu. A vehicle was looted.

Kemal Saiki, spokesman for the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC), said the incident followed a similar one several days earlier in the same area. Attacks against humanitarian actors had also occurred in South Kivu where an NGO storehouse in Uvira was plundered on 20 June.

Regis Mathon, Solidarité's coordinator in eastern DRC, said the recent attack had forced the agency to stop some operations. "We have suspended our activities in Rutshuru territory after this attack," he said, adding that the NGO would, however, remain in other areas of the east. "Our vehicle was attacked by armed men who are hard to identify," he added.

The agency "suspended activities in the area controlled by the troops of dissident [Congolese army] General Laurent Nkunda as security conditions deteriorated", Saiki said on 27 June.

Similar attacks had displaced more civilians in Kiwandja, Nyamilima, Ishasha and Kisharo, all in North Kivu, where 42,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) had gathered since February.

In South Kivu, increased tension due to army operations against fighters of the Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and a Congolese militia known as the Rastas had caused more displacement in June.

Saiki said a joint evaluation mission by MONUC and humanitarian actors toured Kisharo, Nyamilima and Ishasha areas last week and noted that almost daily attacks were being committed against civilians, either by the FDLR or by soldiers from the mixed brigades.

In some parts of the two provinces, mixed brigades exist alongside troops loyal to Nkunda, who have not been integrated into the Congolese army. There are also integrated troops and fighters from armed groups, usually foreigners, such as the Rwandan FDLR.

"MONUC deplores these incidents, which are occurring while response mechanisms are being explored between MONUC and the concerned actors," Saiki said.

MONUC, he added, was also concerned about the political manoeuvres of Nkunda's Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), because it was pushing civilian authorities to close IDP camps in Kichanga, Mweso in Masisi territory and Nyanzale, Rutshuru territory.

The CNDP was also imposing taxes on the populations and putting in place its own administration. As a result, about 5,000 families displaced from Kisharu, representing an estimated 25,000 people, remain without assistance because of the high risk to aid workers of attacks by armed groups in the area.

Another 2,299 families - 11,495 people - had arrived in Kisharu, Saiki said.

Darfur: Peace Force May Take 6 Months to Deploy

From Reuters

A stepped-up peacekeeping force to stem violence in Sudan's Darfur region may take six months to deploy after a resolution is passed at the U.N. Security Council, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.

Earlier in Khartoum, the United Nations said murder, rape and abductions were on the rise in West Darfur state, noting with concern that increased violence in the lawless Sudanese region had driven more people into camps.

British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who is co-authoring a resolution mandating the hybrid operation of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers, said on Wednesday he expected to finalizethe draft this week, and it could come to a vote a week later.

Hedi Annabi, assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, told reporters after briefing the Security Council that there would be a troop-contributors meeting on Friday.

He said much groundwork was needed before the force can be deployed and it was difficult to set a precise timeline.

"We hope that we can start deploying this operation within six months from the day a resolution and a mandate are adopted by the Security Council," Annabi said. "It does take time."

Under sustained international pressure, Sudan agreed on June 12 to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police, but many diplomats doubt Khartoum will keep its word.

The force's aim is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.

Sudan has sent mixed signals about the hybrid force, saying it should be under the AU's command and control rather than the United Nations', and suggesting it should be mainly African.

Asked about reported comments by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir that the force should not include Western troops, Annabi said Bashir had assured the Security Council this month that he accepted the force without conditions.

"What we need to focus on now is implementation and deeds rather than words," Annabi said. "We should all choose to have some hearing problems because reacting to this or that statement might not be helpful," he added.

"We have as part of the understanding a commitment that we will look in priority for African troops. We will make every effort to preserve the African character of the operation," he said.

Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke, who holds the Security Council presidency, said it was vital that the resolution mandating the force was unambiguous, particularly in setting out the command and control structure of the force, which is unusual in being a joint U.N.-AU operation.

He said he also wanted to see a clear timetable for the deployment.

Darfur: U.N. Concerned as Violence Escalates

From Reuters

Murder, rape and abductions are on the rise in West Darfur state, the United Nations said on Wednesday, noting with concern that increased violence in the lawless Sudanese region had driven more people into camps.

U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri detailed reports of tribal killings, and militia and aerial attacks on villages.

"Of particular concern is the recent upsurge in car-jacking, killings, abductions and rape in the area of Zalingei ( West Darfur State)," she told reporters in Khartoum.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven into miserable camps during more than four years of violence in the region bordering Chad.

Masked men shot dead a tribal leader in the Khamsa Daqaa'iq camp in West Darfur, Achouri said.

She added some 200 Arab militiamen on horse back attacked on June 24 near Jabel Moon, a mountainous area in West Darfur, but there were no immediate reports of any casualties.

Reports of aerial bombardment and militia activity in South Darfur have also caused thousands of people to flee their homes for the relative safety of camps.

"Al Salam camp (South Darfur), which had a population of 13,300 in March, now houses 28,000 IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), with reports of 5,000 still on their way," Achouri told reporters.

The rise in violence comes two weeks after the Sudanese government agreed to the deployment of a U.N.-AU joint force of thousands of troops to replace the African Union force that has proved ineffective.

Washington calls the rape, murder and looting in Darfur genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use and Khartoum rejects. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir puts the death toll at 9,000.

Since a peace deal last year, signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions, the rebels have split into more than a dozen groups.

A U.N. human rights team recently visited Kutum, Kabkabiya and Al Kuma towns in North Darfur and documented many cases of continued violence against civilians, according to Achouri.

An attack on June 8 by Janjaweed Arab militias on Mutu village, also in North Darfur state, killed two people, the U.N. team reported.

Darfur: Presidential Adviser Dies in Car Crash

From Reuters

Sudan's powerful presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa, who was key to signing last year's Darfur peace accord, died in a car accident in northern Sudan on Wednesday.

"He died in a car accident on his way to Shendi. He and his brother were killed and other members of his family were injured," a presidential source said.

No other vehicle was involved in the accident, which appeared to be the result of a blown tyre, the source added.

The state news agency (SUNA) said Khalifa, born in 1952, and his brother would be buried in his home town of Taybat al-Khawad later on Wednesday.

Khalifa was one of the main interlocutors in the Darfur peace process and head of the government negotiating team in talks which led to the signing of a 2006 peace deal for Sudan's Darfur region between the government and one rebel faction.

The accident happened at about 4:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) on Wednesday.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and ministers flew to the area for the funeral. Other government employees embarked on the long drive to his village.

A visit by Chadian President Idriss Deby to Khartoum on Wednesday was postponed, SUNA said.

Khalifa graduated from Khartoum university's faculty of medicine in 1976. He had previously held the positions of governor of Khartoum and agriculture minister.

Known for his gruff manner, he was energetic, large of stature and said to be one of Bashir's close inner circle.

Sometimes called a "thug" by his critics, he was blunt and to the point in his diplomatic dealings.

The United Nations paid tribute to Khalifa on Wednesday, offering its condolences to his family.

"The U.N. mission in Sudan learned with shock and sadness of the passing early this morning of presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa," U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri told reporters in Khartoum.

"He will be remembered as a tenacious negotiator and a high calibre statesman and for his contribution to the peaceful resolution of the Darfur conflict."

Darfur: Clooney and Cast Raise Millions

From the AP

"Ocean's Thirteen" stars have raised $5.5 million to help Sudanese civilians survive in conflict-wracked Darfur, actor George Clooney said Tuesday.

Clooney told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Rome that he was joined by Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and producer Jerry Weintraub in raising the funds, most of which was contributed at a dinner during the film's premiere last month at the Cannes Film Festival.

Clooney said the money was donated to various charities dealing with Darfur. He said his group wants to keep emptying and replenishing the coffers of the humanitarian organization they co-founded, called Not On Our Watch, to focus global attention on the plight of the 2.5 million civilians in Darfur who have fled their homes.

"There are only a few things we can do _ protect them where we can, and provide food, water, health care and counseling," he said. "We're just trying to get them to live long enough to get to the next step."

More than 200,000 people have died in the Darfur region of western Sudan since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing in response a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed _ a charge it denies.

Clooney announced the latest donation from Not On Our Watch _ $1 million to the U.N. World Food Program _ which will be used to help the U.N. agency deliver food and other necessities by helicopter to inaccessible villages in Darfur.

Not On Our Watch's first donation $2.75 million went to the International Rescue Committee. It has also donated $750,000 to the British-based relief agency Oxfam and $1 million to the British-based charity Save The Children.

Clooney said everyone on the board is committed to keep raising awareness and money.

"I have every intention of doing it in other places," he said, and the upcoming film festivals in Venice and Deauville, France "sound like good spots" for fundraising events.

Uganda: Boy Soldier Turned Rebel Chief a Victim, Not a Criminal

From The Independent

Dominic Ongwen might be the youngest person ever charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

As one of four commanders in the Ugandan rebel movement the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Ongwen is wanted in The Hague for "murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burning of houses and looting". He is also charged with forcibly recruiting children as "fighters, porters and sex slaves".

The date of birth on Ongwen's arrest warrant is recorded as "unknown". But to his family, tracked down this week in Olwal, in the Gulu district of northern Uganda, he is remembered as a 10-year-old, one of thousands of children abducted in the 20-year conflict between the LRA and Uganda's government. He was taken from near his home in 1986. "He is a lost child," said Akot Madelena, Ongwen's aunt, who looked after him when his mother died.

His guardian, Madelena, who is heavily pregnant with her seventh child, believes there should be amnesty for child rebels. "If he needs punishment, let them give it at home, I am ready to look after him."

The eldest son, Ongwen was in effect a child farmer, responsible for three younger brothers. He rose early to work that morning in 1986. At 11am he started the 4km walk home, before it became too hot to work. "We were coming from digging and a group of men with guns took Dominic," said his cousin Kilama Christoper, now 28. "They took him because he was the biggest."

Terrified, Dominic did not resist or beg.

The LRA'sfighting force is made up primarily of child soldiers, many forced into gruesome killing rituals to cut them off from their communities. Humanitarian agencies say 20,000 children have been abducted or killed in the war, and nearly two million people displaced. Ongwen was indicted by the ICC in July 2005, along with four others, including Joseph Kony, the LRA's head. But his circumstances present "a fundamental dilemma", an ICC source in Uganda acknowledges, as he is a "veteran child soldier". The ICC does not prosecute minors; but Ongwen was an adult at the time of the charges.

Andre Laperriere, of the ICC Trust Fund for Victims, in northern Uganda, said child soldiers and abductees are "among the most victimised". He said thousands of children in northern Uganda had "completely lost their childhood... forced into terrible acts during the war".

Peace talks with the government are precarious because the LRA insists no settlement can be made until ICC charges are lifted and an alternative justice system is agreed.

Many civil and political leaders in Uganda also see the ICC warrants as an obstacle and say that local justice is preferable. The opposition leader Morris Oyengo-Latigo, said: "Most of the so-called fighters are victims, who were abducted, subjugated to mental torture and transformed into a fighting force. And the challenge is, when does somebody become responsible?"

Under the traditional justice of mato oput, the community forgives crimes of the past and reconcile.

A few kilometres from Olwal, in Pagak Camp, people hold another traditional ceremony to cleanse the camp of "evil spirits". This is the site of one of the worst massacres of the war. In May 2004, 50 women, some with babies, were made to lie in the grass and bludgeoned to death by the LRA.

"We can forgive but not forget," said one Pagak resident. "The LRA leaders must be punished."

CAR: Desperate Villagers Flee

From the Washington Post

Widespread banditry, kidnapping and political violence in the volatile and virtually lawless northeastern corner of the Central African Republic are forcing thousands of villagers to flee to Chad, where the security situation is possibly more desperate, according to an Amnesty International report released Tuesday.

The strife in the Republic, a landlocked nation of about 4.4 million people, is being exacerbated by the politically distinct conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, which has spilled into eastern Chad.

"There is a lot of talk rightly about Darfur and eastern Chad, but the international community seems to be forgetting the people in CAR," said Godfrey Byaruhanga, an Amnesty International researcher who interviewed villagers in the Republic and Chad.

The largest humanitarian relief effort in the world has been mobilized to help an estimated 2.5 million people displaced by the conflict in Sudan. But there is "a near complete vacuum" of any protection for civilians in the Republic, he said.

The Central African Republic army has been battling at least four rebel groups in the northeastern corner of the country, which borders Chad on the west and Sudan on the east. Villagers have been caught in the middle, with rebels killing civilians who refuse to join up with their movements, and government soldiers killing civilians accused of helping the rebels, according to the Amnesty report.

Perhaps taking their cue from the tactics employed by the Sudanese government in Darfur, government forces in the Republic have burned entire villages to the ground.

Opportunistic bandits and moonlighting rebels -- including some from Chad -- have come to see the Republic as a kind of free-for-all, and kidnapping has become rampant, Byaruhanga said.

In some cases, children as young as 3 have been taken and held for ransom as high as $4,000, a fortune to rural villagers. Byaruhanga said some families told him their children had been kidnapped as many as seven times. Cattle have also been plundered, leaving families destitute.

In recent months, at least 10,000 people from the Republic have crossed into the savannahs of southern Chad, Byaruhanga said, and several thousand more are said to be on the move.

"It is extremely desperate," Byaruhanga said.

CAR: Rebel Defections May Boost Aid Work

From IRIN

Two months after the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) concluded a peace agreement with a rebel group in the northeast, some fighters belonging to another insurgent group in the northwest have abandoned rebellion, sources said.

The move, observers said, could boost ongoing efforts to resume humanitarian work in the volatile region where the killing of a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) worker on 11 June prompted agencies to suspend operations.

The International Medical Corps has decided to resume operations in Vakaga Province, an area beset by rebellion, rampant banditry and the spillover of conflicts in Chad and Sudan.

MSF, which has had to suspend work in the northwest 29 times due to insecurity, said it had yet to reopen its mobile clinics, which provide primary healthcare to more than 6,500 people a month.

"We are tired of the rebellion and we want to make peace with the government following repeated appeals by President [François] Bozize," Magloire Nguetel, head of military operations for the Popular Army for the Restoration of Democracy (APRD) rebel force, told IRIN from Paoua town on 26 June.

Local sources said tens of APRD rebels had returned to the town while government sources claimed another 100 rebels had surrendered to the local authorities in the northern town of Kaga-Bandoro.

"We have registered 33 rebels who decided to join the national army and put an end to violence in the region," Lt Bechir Dopani, commander of the presidential guards detached in Paoua, said.

Nguetel, a former soldier under the previous Patasse regime who joined the rebellion in 2004, was among those who had renounced rebellion. "Many of my colleagues who are still in the bush are ready to lay down their guns and come back," he said. "They fear for their safety and want to get a solemn guarantee from the ruling regime over their security before making their final decision."

APRD spokesman, Laurent Djim-Woei Bibetim, confirmed the defections but warned his men against it. "Some of our men are now defecting and going back to town," he said. "We have made a new law that [means] killing any rebel who tries to run away."

Paoua district officer, Capt Jacques Maho, said the defectors had complained of poor treatment in the bush. "The rebels who surrendered revealed they were living in bad conditions, running out of food and medicine in the bush," he said. However, he added, the defections were partly linked to the efforts of the people of Paoua, who set up a committee to discuss how to end the violence.

"A group of elders have met the rebels on several occasions to advocate for the return of peace," he explained.

The APRD is one of the groups fighting Bozize's government, claiming he overthrew a legitimate government in March 2003, has mismanaged public funds and divided the nation. In February, one of its commanders, Bertin Wafio, announced he would welcome any relief organisation willing to take care of the children in rebel ranks - estimated by aid workers to be about 300.

Darfur: U.N. Envoys Say Keep Pressure on Sudan

From Reuters

Sudan has expressed its "total unconditional acceptance" of a hybrid international force for Darfur, but the world must keep up the pressure on Khartoum, Britain's U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.

Reporting to the U.N. Security Council on a trip to Sudan this month by representatives of all 15 nations on the council, Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said the tone of the visit to Khartoum was much better than on previous trips.

Sudan agreed on June 12 to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police, but many diplomats doubt Khartoum will keep its word.

"In all the questions put to them, both the foreign minister and the president implicitly confirmed total unconditional acceptance of the hybrid operation," Jones Parry said.

The force's aim is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.

Sudan has sent mixed signals about the hybrid force, saying it should be under the AU's command and control rather than the United Nations', and suggesting it should be mainly African.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he understood Sudan's preference for African forces, but had asked Sudanese officials if they accepted that "there will be no ban or limitation on the non-African participation."

"The foreign minister and the president, they were very clear. So now we have to see what they do in reality," he told reporters before the Security Council meeting.

Khalilzad said Sudan has a history of "dragging its feet" so it was vital to maintain both engagement and pressure.

The United States has been pushing for a new Security Council resolution imposing fresh sanctions on Sudan, something China has resisted.

"We'll keep the option of additional sanctions available," Khalilzad said. But he said the priority now was to pass a resolution authorizing the hybrid force and its financing. He said that resolution could be circulated this week or next.

Since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions, the insurgents in Darfur have split into more than a dozen different movements.

Jones Parry said it was necessary to keep up the pressure on both Khartoum and the rebels. "The government of Sudan has only come to the present cooperation because of all the international pressure that's been put up on it," he said.

But Khartoum "quite rightly" chastised the international community for not putting pressure on rebels, he said.

"Bringing both sides to an accord within the shortest time scale is the best way of providing long term security and peace in Darfur," Jones Parry said.

CAR: Law and Order Collapsing

From Amnesty International

Amnesty International today warned that hundreds of thousands of civilians are at risk in the Central African Republic (CAR), as violence in neighbouring Sudan and Chad continues unabated.

"As attention remains focused on Darfur and eastern Chad, armed conflict and lawlessness in northern Central African Republic are spiralling, virtually unnoticed by the international community," said Godfrey Byaruhanga, an Amnesty International researcher who recently returned from southern Chad and the CAR.

"The northern areas in particular have become a free-for-all -- a hunting ground for the region's various armed opposition forces, government troops, and even armed bandits -- some of whom come from as far away as West Africa to kidnap and loot in local villages."

CAR armed opposition forces kill civilians who do not support or refuse to join them. Government troops kill civilians they accuse of colluding with the armed groups and burn down entire villages during reprisal attacks. The civilians who survive attacks by government forces and members of armed opposition forces are attacked by bandits who kidnap for ransom and loot property. The CAR government is clearly failing in its duty to protect civilians in the area.

Interviewing dozens of refugees who recently fled to southern Chad from the northern areas of the CAR, Amnesty International's preliminary findings indicate a near complete vacuum of authority to protect civilians -- allowing free rein to a host of armed actors. As well as CAR opposition forces and government troops, Chadian government troops and opposition forces also carry out incursions into the region. Armed bandits are roaming northern CAR, searching for cattle and children, whom they kidnap and release in exchange for hefty ransoms.

"The entire area has become a cauldron of violence and fear -- threatening to destabilize even further what is already one of the most unstable and dangerous areas in the world," said Byaruhanga. "Civilians are trapped in a lose-lose situation, with many so afraid that they are actually fleeing into Sudan, Cameroon and southern Chad -- effectively moving from the frying pan into the fire out of sheer desperation."

While in refugee camps in southern Chad , Amnesty International's researchers met with families whose children -- some as young as three years old -- had been kidnapped and held for ransom by armed bandits commonly known as Zaraguinas or coupeurs de routes.

Some parents have had to pay a ransom of up to two million CFA Francs (the equivalent of US$ 4,000) for a child. Some families have had their children kidnapped for ransom as many as seven times. Parents who previously had more than 100 heads of cattle, from which they derived their livelihood, are now destitute and dependant on meagre rations of humanitarian aid in refugee camps in southern Chad.

"The parents who got their children back after paying ransoms are the lucky ones. Some children have been killed because their parents were unable to pay the ransoms, while others are still being held with no authority to rescue them," Byaruhanga said.

"News is clearly spreading to criminal elements throughout the region that they can have free-rein in northern CAR, as there is an almost total absence of any authority," said Byaruhanga.

"Law and order in the Central African Republic is heading rapidly towards the brink of collapse -- the government's authority is already effectively confined to the capital, Bangui, where also insecurity, corruption and impunity reign. The repercussions of such a collapse would be catastrophic for the entire central African region."

Amnesty International calls for the immediate deployment of a multi-dimensional UN force to protect civilians in CAR, warning that the international community -- including the UN and the African Union -- are not taking the deteriorating situation there seriously enough.

The organization said that the force should be capable of protecting civilians and that deployment of such a force should not wait for the deployment of forces to Darfur or eastern Chad.

"This situation is too dangerous and simply cannot wait," said Byaruhanga. "The people of the Central African Republic should not be left to live or die at the whim of the Sudanese or Chadian governments, especially when the CAR government has agreed to the deployment of an international force."

Darfur: Activists Press China with 'Genocide Olympics'

From The Christian Science Monitor

It all started with a petite blonde in a fury. Horrified by the violence she saw on trips to Darfur, and angry with what she perceived to be China's complacency on the issue, movie-star-turned-UNICEF-goodwill-ambassador Mia Farrow sent off a fuming op-ed piece to The Wall Street Journal in March. "These are the Genocide Olympics," she protested, in reference to the upcoming 2008 Games in Beijing. "China is funding the first genocide of the third millennium."

Smith College professor Eric Reeves, an activist who, together with Farrow, spearheaded the "shaming campaign" in which the Games are being branded as the "Genocide Olympics," says the Chinese will only be pressured to act in Darfur by appealing to its sense of national pride and honor and hitting them where it hurts most this year.

"They need to choose between the lucrative relationship with Khartoum and having their coveted Games lumped in the collective consciousness with Nazi Germany's hosting of the Berlin Games in 1936," Mr. Reeves says. The idea, he adds, is not to boycott the Games – as that would only end up punishing innocent athletes and making China seem like a sympathetic victim – but rather to "hold China's feet to the fire."

Soon, Steven Spielberg, who has signed on as one of the Beijing Olympics' "artistic advisers" found himself being drawn into the fray. Mr. Spielberg could "go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games," Ms. Farrow had charged, referring to the German filmmaker considered by many a Nazi sympathizer and propagandist for those 1936 Olympics.

America's favorite director quickly flew into action, shooting off a private letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. "I add my voice to those who ask that China change its policy toward Sudan," he stated. "China is uniquely positioned ... and has considerable influence in the region that could lead efforts by the international community to bring an end to the human suffering there."

A month later, in May, Congress jumped on the bandwagon when a group of 108 members sent a letter to the Chinese government warning that the Beijing Olympics could be endangered if China did not change its policies in Sudan.

The National Basketball Association was not far behind. Led by Cleveland Cavaliers forward Ira Newble – who, on the road with the Cavs in March, had read a profile of Reeves in the newspaper — various players across the league united to create a "Dream Team of Conscience." The group soon released its own open letter to the Government of China and the International Olympic Committee:

"We, as basketball players in the NBA 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."

Meanwhile, at a press conference last week, the Save Darfur coalition, together with Reeves, Farrow, Newble, and others announced the launch of a series of further actions to shame China, including a faux Olympic torch relay through countries that define the history of genocide. The relay will start on Aug. 8, 2007 on the Darfur-Chad border and travel through Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Germany, and Cambodia. The relay will end in Hong Kong and will coincide with mass rallies at Chinese embassies around the world.

China, in response, has denounced these efforts to link the games with its foreign policy, saying such a campaign runs counter to the Olympic spirit.

"There are a handful of people who are trying to politicize the Olympic Games," Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told reporters, stressing that the Games are a time to celebrate friendly ties between nations. "This is against the spirit of the Games. It also runs counter to the aspirations of all the people in the world."

But protestations aside, it seems someone in Beijing is listening. Shortly after Farrow's op-ed appeared, China appointed a special envoy to Darfur and reportedly stepped up efforts to persuade Khartoum to accept international peacekeepers in Darfur.

Pressure over the Olympics could help cause a shift from China's noninterference policy, says Reeves. "To date, what we've seen are largely cosmetic efforts, trying to 'respond to Darfur' on the cheap ... but as shame and dismay intensify, as the pain grows, we'll see a good deal more than cosmetics."

Darfur: Sarkozy's Coming-Out Party

From The Christian Science Monitor

The international community has bandied plans and initiatives to resolve the crisis in Darfur since it began four years ago with few results. But a meeting of senior officials from 18 influential nations, convened on Monday by new French President Nicholas Sarkozy was the first to involve France, the US, and China, who sent its special envoy for Sudan, Liu Giujin.

The stated aim of the talks is to "mobilize" and beefup the African Union (AU) and the United Nations peacekeeping forces, and support talks between Sudan and Chad, whose border with Darfur has been increasingly tense as Darfurian refugees stream west. Mr. Sarkozy said France would be willing to contribute roughly €10 million ($13.46 million) to the AU, whose force of 7,000 troops has been limited by a lack of funding. The European Union pledged an extra €31 million in humanitarian funds for "the coming months."

The French initiative flows directly from Sarkozy's policies and persona: The French leader wants his nation back on the diplomatic map, and he appears to have the tools, the desire, and the political moment to do so, experts say.

"It all fits together ... Sarkozy and Kouchner have seized the moment," says Francois Heisbourg, special advisor to the Foundation for Strategic Studies in Paris, referring to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. "Six months ago this wouldn't have worked. The Chinese would have refused. But now that Stephen Spielberg has captured China's attention, and I mean this, Beijing can see [that] their role in Darfur is harming their reputation, and they have wised up."

"Whether [the conference] will mean anything, I don't know," adds Mr. Heisbourg.

Some experts expressed skepticism as to the efficacy of an international conference that does not include Sudan or the AU.

Others, such as John Prendergast, who recently started a new action group called ENOUGH to combat genocide, feel otherwise. In a June 18 strategy paper, Mr. Prendergast and ENOUGH policy adviser Colin Thomas-Jensen said the time is right for what they call "an axis of peace for Darfur" among China, France, and the US.

"Perhaps the single most influential action that could be taken now to end the horrors in Darfur would be for the U.S., France and China to convene an informal 'troika' .... All three countries now have special envoys focused on Darfur. All three have leverage with either the Sudanese regime or the rebels, or both," said the strategy paper.

France is one of a few states with serious military projection in Africa, where it has bases, interests, and experience.

Doing something on Darfur is popular among French intellectuals, and providing a lead on the issue could balance political negatives caused by Sarkozy's tough stance on north African immigrants. Sarkozy's foreign minister, Mr. Kouchner, made his reputation as an advocate of humanitarian intervention, another perceived plus.

Sarkozy ran for president this spring partly on a campaign to rebuild France's image and clout. He wants to turn a corner by "rejoining" Europe and the world, as he put it in his presidential victory speech.

As a conservative who seeks better transatlantic relations, Sarkozy retains little of the "Iraq baggage" of predecessor Jacques Chirac, who opposed the American-led Iraq war. Sarkozy has steadily spoken of strengthening US-French relations – and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice commented on France's "energizing role" on Darfur.

However, AU officials were not invited to the conference and lamented not being well-informed about the initiative. An article in the French daily Liberation on Monday quoted unnamed African diplomats who, while pleased with the Chinese presence at the meeting, complained that they learned about the summit through press reports. The AU, along with the UN, would probably be one of the bodies involved in a more robust international military presence in Darfur and in Chad on Sudan's western border.

Earlier this month, AU leader John Kufuor of Ghana met with Sarkozy and stated that he felt the president "will definitely try to help find a solution in Darfur."

From the BBC

After appearing to care little about Darfur for the last four years - five weeks of the Sarkozy presidency have thrust France into the centre of efforts to resolve the conflict.

"Silence kills," Nicholas Sarkozy told a day long conference in Paris. "We want to mobilise the international community to say that's enough."

More than two million people have been displaced from their homes since the conflict began - and it's thought that at least 200,000 people have been killed.

Eighteen countries were represented at the talks, as well as the heads of the United Nations and the Arab League.

More noticeable through were the absentees.

None of the conflict's protagonists - Sudan, Chad or the Darfur rebels - were invited.

And most surprising of all, the African Union, the region's current peacekeepers, declined to attend.

Evidently not everyone is thrilled about France's sudden wish to get involved.

Two weeks ago, Sudan gave it's approval for a joint United Nations-African Union force to be deployed into Darfur.

If it was expecting a few verbal pats on the back it was to be disappointed.

"We can no longer afford a situation in Darfur in which agreements are made and then not kept," US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said.

"The United States will continue to argue that there must be consequences for Sudan if it does not live up to the obligations that it has undertaken."

There is still plenty of scope for Sudan to delay the deployment.

The make-up of the hybrid African Union-United Nations force has yet to be finalised - with details such as the exact composition of the force unresolved.

It is not even the first time that Sudan has agreed to this force. In November last year they gave it their approval before proceeding to reject almost every detail that was proposed.

"We are ready to have the force deployed at any time - the matter is on the other side," Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told the BBC.

"The ball is actually in the court of the United Nations to expedite the operation."

But despite Mr Akol's lofty title - his thoughts are rarely the final word on Khartoum's policy.

It is the ministers controlling Sudan's security apparatus who have the real power - and they are likely to assert their views only when the actual mechanics of troop deployment are discussed.

Even with Sudan's complete acquiescence it is likely to be 2008 before most of the troops arrive.

Three thousand UN troops are expected this autumn followed by up to 10,000 the following year.

"It's cumbersome," said UN special envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson. "But the most pressing issue is that we establish a political process so that when the peacekeepers do arrive there is actually a peace for them to keep."

Mr Eliasson has made four trips to Sudan this year - and has drawn up a roadmap towards planned negotiations in August.

So far there has been no indication that anyone else is using the same map.

One of the biggest hurdles is the state of Darfur's rebel movements.

When the conflict started in 2003 there were just two rebel groups. Now there are at least 10.

Rival commanders with widely ranging aspirations now control most of Darfur's arid countryside.

For peace talks to take place - the rebels will have to unite around a negotiating team and some common objectives.

Up until now there has been little sign of that taking place. The Sudanese government faces a crisis of credibility.

It signed a peace agreement with one rebel faction in May 2006 but has implemented few of its provisions.

If a lasting peace deal is to be made Khartoum will have to convince whoever they negotiate with that they are genuinely committed to sharing wealth and power.

CAR/Chad: Japan Offers Aid to Darfur's Neighbours

From Sapa-AFP

Japan said on Tuesday it will offer four million dollars (about R28-million) of emergency grant aid to internally displaced refugees in Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) affected by the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.

The aid, which will help pay for blankets, water supply facilities and public lavatories, was made in response to an emergency appeal by UN agencies, a foreign ministry official said.

The new aid was aimed at helping people in Chad and the Central African Republic who were displaced by tensions including cross-border attacks from neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region, the Japanese official said.

Africa: China Launches $1B Trade Fund

From the AP

China launched a $1 billion fund Tuesday to finance trade and investment by Chinese companies in Africa as part of efforts to nurture commercial ties with the resource-rich continent.

The fund is part of Chinese aid and loans to Africa promised by President Hu Jintao at a November meeting with dozens of African leaders in Beijing.

China has been promoting itself as a partner for Africa's development as it tries to secure oil and other resources for its booming economy and new markets for its exports. But Beijing faces complaints that it is treating Africa as a colony and that it supports oppressive regimes, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.

The new fund is to be financed by the government's China Development Bank, which said the fund eventually will expand to $5 billion.

It will "support Chinese enterprises in developing cooperation with Africa and in investing in Africa," the bank said in a statement.

The fund will target projects in infrastructure, farming, basic industries and manufacturing, it said.

Activists often criticize such "tied aid" linked to donor nations' companies as inefficient.

Many African leaders have welcomed China's growing involvement and the potential for increased trade and aid.

Chinese state oil companies have expanded aggressively, signing deals in Nigeria, Angola and Sudan. Chinese manufacturers are trying to expand exports to African markets.

But China's commercial presence has prompted complaints by some Africans, who say growing Chinese competition is threatening jobs in textiles and other industries.

Human rights activists have criticized China for helping to shield Sudan, where it has large oil investments, from pressure over its handling of its ravaged Darfur region.

At a Darfur conference this week in Paris, the Chinese envoy argued against imposing sanctions on Sudan and criticized calls for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics over the issue.

Beijing has appointed a Darfur special envoy and defended its efforts to make peace in the region.

The November meeting in Beijing brought together heads of state from 35 of the 53 African nations and top officials from 13 others _ one of the largest such gatherings in history.

Hu kept up the rapid pace of high-level contacts this year, making an eight-nation tour of Africa in January. Other Chinese leaders also have visited the continent.

Int'l Justice: Taylor War Crimes Trial Unhinged by False Start

From the AP

Borrowing a page from the playbook of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, former Liberian president Charles Taylor has succeeded in further stalling his trial in The Hague on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The first witnesses were to take the stand yesterday, testifying to savage rapes, murders and mutilations carried out in neighbouring Sierra Leone by militias allegedly led by Mr. Taylor in the 1990s.

But Mr. Taylor refused to appear in court, sending a message from the seaside Dutch prison where he has been held for the past year that he had fired his lawyer and - despite having amassed a vast personal fortune from illegal diamond and timber sales while in office - that he had inadequate resources to defend himself.

The proceedings at a special session of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (a hybrid national and United Nations body) are being watched intently in Africa. Mr. Taylor is the first sitting African head of state to be indicted for abuses committed on his watch. And, outside Africa, his trial is being hailed as a crucial step toward ending impunity and fortifying the concept of international justice. "Having a former African head of state on trial - even if imperfectly - is in itself incredibly significant," said Caitlin Reiger, who is monitoring the trial for the International Center for Transitional Justice.

"It gives some solace to the victims of the crimes; people that they thought were completely untouchable are not necessarily so." But in Africa, many human-rights advocates and conflict mediators are far less enthused. "All that euphoria that greeted the idea of African ownership, African solutions for African problems - all that is a thing of the past after Taylor's trial," said Peter Kagwanja, president of the Africa Policy Institute in Nairobi. "This is a blow for African governance, and all because some were too hawkish in their need to string up Taylor."

Mr. Kagwanja and other critics are disturbed by several things: First, that the trial is taking place outside Africa. Mr. Taylor won Liberia's presidency in a suspect election in 1997 but was forced out of office in 2003 and agreed to go into exile in a lavish villa in Nigeria in exchange for immunity. But he continued to meddle in Liberian politics, and shortly after Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected Liberia's new president, she asked that he be extradited. Nigeria, under pressure from the United States (which wanted to support Ms. Johnson-Sirleaf), complied.

She then agreed that he should be tried in Europe, for fear that a local trial would disrupt the fragile peace that holds in the region. (Yet it is questionable how much distance the trial provides in this digital age - a live blog from the trial, http://www.charlestaylortrial.org, which is maintained by international justice groups, receives most of its comments and feedback from people in West Africa who are following the proceedings in real time.) The second criticism is that Mr. Taylor's trial has made it more difficult to act against other African dictators and war criminals, who no longer trust any offer of immunity that might have got them out of office. "Since Taylor was put on trial, all African dictators are sitting tight," Mr. Kagwanja said, calling it a return to the politics of the 1970s and '80s, when strongmen stayed in office until they died or were toppled, but never agreed to brokered retirements, a form of transition that had been becoming increasingly common in recent years.

"[South African President Thabo] Mbeki cannot go [to a leader] and say, 'Get out of power, I'll give you immunity' - there is no trust, that is gone." While it would be ideal to see an end to impunity and to see all of those who cause civil wars behind bars, he said, the blunt reality is that the threat of international prosecution undermines the possibility of brokered agreements to end conflicts such as Uganda's civil war or the fighting in Darfur, and thus the chance to save lives.

CAR/Darfur: France's African War?

From Channel 4 [The report also contains video]

This African civil war have been mostly ignored in the West. But unlike other conflicts, a Western power has definitively taken a side. A strong-arm intervention that's proven controversial.

The boys we spoke to shared one experience. A story barely heard in the West, but alive in these boys' drawings.The fight for the northern town of Birao, this March - and how the French used jets to bomb their rebel army.

"We were afraid as we don't have any arms to kill the Mirages. They used bombs - BOOM! "

So we headed north for Birao. On the way we saw a landscape of anarchy, ruin and rape. One - that in the village of Massabo - is beginning to resemble the bloodshed of neighbouring Darfur.

Raiders on horseback came here in February, killing 56 - torched homes and graves all that remains. Locals say they were Janjaweed from Sudan - the same armed men blamed for genocide in Darfur.

Some horror here is homegrown - like rape. We met one woman who said her baby was conceived, she says, when two rebels held her down for third to rape her.

"I was abandoned by my husband, so have no money but must raise this child somehow. I have to borrow food and clothing. I can't complain about what happened as the people who did it are also in charge here."

A common crime spoken of by women in this village. At the mercy of rebels who answer to General Daman. We met the General and asked if his men were behind these rapes. But he said it wasn't government or rebel troops, but children from another town.

As we head north, it's clear this violence has put an entire region on the move.

Toby Lanzer, Resident co-ordinator, UN spoke to us about it saying:

"We have the highest proportion of a population of any country in the world displaced over the last 12 months here. 300,000 people who have been churned out of their villages.

"What I saw when I got to Birao reminded me very much of what I saw when I reached Grozny at the turn of the century. I mean, it was a town that had been almost entirely levelled. 90 or even 95 per cent of the town's population was no longer living there.

"I think it was with shock and horror that we witnessed the aftermath of what must have been a very very severe battle."

The rebels first stormed through here on March 3rd, ten French soldiers were caught up in the fight. So the French flew in dozens of reinforcements supporting a quick - and many here say brutal - counter-attack by government troops.

They also burned and killed - seeking vengeance, some say. A mosque was burned down, locals say, after government troops dragged four men into the street, asked no questions and then executed them as rebel sympathisers.

Another three men were killed in this compound also by government troops, for the same reasons. At the time, it was used by aid agency Medicins Sans Frontiers.

Elsewhere, locals also speak of the ferocity of the French response. This man is the village chief. He says he watched two French jets fly three sorties over the MSF compound. He says he was metres from here when he saw one jet drop something that enveloped this house in flames - and it left walls entact.

Another eyewitness gave exactly the same account. A huge ball of flames. Witnesses call it an incendiary bomb. Although no-one died in these flames, if the French used one on a civilian area like this, they'd probably be breaching several arms treaties.

They categorically deny doing so, or bombing anywhere in Birao.

Medicins Sans Frontiers declined to comment on the incident. At the time they were the only foreign aid agency operative in the area, and these allegations will add to questions already being asked about French conduct here, and their support for the government army.

Human Rights Watch told us France would lose credibility in leading international action over Darfur, if it doesn't speak out about abuses here - by an allied army it's training and supporting.

The local commander of government troops denied accusations of execution and rape. His rations spell out the links between local and French troops. But their commander also said local troops didn't attack civilians.

"In a military action, collateral damage is possible. I wasn't here to see any. But there was no voluntary action against the population." - Commandante Christophe Baure - French Parachutist Regiment

Now, in this fragile peace, what little community there is, is in collapse. We met one woman who has malaria and is eight months pregnant. She came from 25 kilometres away, only to find no medicine in this hospital to help her. Her husband looks on, powerless.

That day, a UN team land, to see if what can be done to fill the vacuum left here by conflict. This airport might help get aid to neighbouring Darfur or send in peacekeepers to secure this country's borders. They're met by the French, who'd lead this presence, even as questions over their past conduct remain.

The French want to lead the way, and today top diplomats met in Paris to try and work together before this country earns the moniker of the new Darfur.For some though, no intervention now is enough.

As we leave Birao, we pass the funeral cortege of the pregnant woman with malaria. She died seven hours after we saw her.

A people that can no longer afford to wait for help, or choose who gives it.

Darfur: Rice Keeps Sanctions Threat Against Sudan

From the AP

The world must be ready to impose sanctions on Sudan if it reneges on its pledge to let more peacekeeping forces into ravaged Darfur, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.

The Sudanese government has finally agreed to a larger force aimed at stopping four years of killing. But Rice sounded a note of caution amid bland or optimistic assessments by other nations.

``Sudan has a history of agreeing to things and then trying to condition or change them or to backtrack and say, 'Well no, we didn't really agree to that,''' Rice said at a conference on Darfur organized by the new conservative-led French government.

The conflict began when African rebels in Sudan's arid Darfur region took up arms against the central Sudanese government more than four years ago, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing in response a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed - a charge Sudan denies.

``We have lost a lot of time while agreements have been made that have not been kept,'' Rice added. ``We can no longer afford a situation in Darfur where agreements are made and not kept.''

The U.N. chief, Ban Ki-moon, insisted at the meeting that ``slow but credible and considerable progress'' has recently been made to resolve the crisis.

President Bush announced more U.S. sanctions on Sudan last month, but at Ban's request the U.S. held off on pushing hard for broader United Nations punishments. Possible punishments would target Sudanese officials and companies, or companies doing business with the oil-rich African nation.

Sudan initially accepted the plan in November but then backtracked, before finally agreeing earlier this month. The timing was interpreted as an attempt by Sudan's leader, President Omar al-Bashir, to avert U.N. sanctions and take the sting out of the conference held Monday in Paris.

``The United States will continue to argue that there must be consequences for Sudan if it does not live up to the obligations that it has undertaken,'' Rice said. Washington supports Ban's diplomatic efforts to bring Sudan along, Rice said, ``but there is a history here.''

``Until Sudan has actually carried out the commitments that it has taken, I think we have to keep the possibility of consequences on the table,'' she added.

Apart from that, Sudan's Arab-led government in Khartoum came in for almost no criticism at a press conference held by some of the diplomats who attended the session, and al-Bashir was not rebuked by name over the conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people since 2003. Another 2.5 million have become refugees.

Although the U.N.'s Ban did not talk of sanctions, he also said Sudan must follow through on its commitments and urged rebel leaders to show ``flexibility and political leadership.''

``This time is for action, particularly by President Bashir,'' he said.

The United Nations and Western governments pressed Sudan for months to accept a plan for a large joint force of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed 7,000-strong African force now in Darfur.

Rice said the switch must happen ``as quickly as possible.''

``We can't afford to wait,'' she said.

But many questions remain on how and when the troops will be deployed and how they will be funded. Those questions were not answered Monday, and there were no specific accomplishments announced after the session.

While the United Nations wants the planned hybrid force to keep its ``African character,'' it may need to look beyond Africa for specialized troops - such as doctors and engineers - and for equipment, said U.N. peacekeeping official Jean-Marie Guehenno. The U.N. special envoy to Darfur, Jan Eliasson, said his native Sweden as well as neighboring Norway were offering engineer units.

The United States and others have considered a separate U.N. resolution to lend structure for the new force.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday's session was not intended to be a peacemaking conference, and Sudan's government was not invited. Rice said the session allowed participants to ``take stock'' of the complicated conflict and diplomacy.

Kouchner said the group, which included Sudan's significant trading partner and diplomatic protector China, would meet again in the fall.

China again came out against sanctions and argued against appeals by some critics for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to force China to get tough with Khartoum.

``Now is not the time to talk about further sanctions,'' said China's special envoy for Sudan, Liu Giujin. He said any attempted link to the Beijing Olympics was ``really unfounded. The basic character of the Olympics is nonpolitical.''

Eliasson, the U.N. Darfur envoy, said he would count on China's cooperation.

``China has already played a constructive role in terms of influencing or sending the message to the government of Sudan that they indeed should accept a larger UN presence, like the hybrid force. I know China was fully behind that,'' he said.

Kouchner said the existing, small, African Union force in Darfur is badly equipped and unpaid.

``We are not going to make progress by increasing the number of soldiers who are unpaid,'' Kouchner said.

Darfur: France, Others to Propose Force for Eastern Chad

From Reuters

France and other European countries will propose a foreign force for eastern Chad to help secure and rebuild its volatile eastern region, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Monday. France has been studying the idea of sending a foreign force to the area, which borders Sudan's violent Darfur region.

Chad's President Idriss Deby appeared to tone down his resistance to the deployment of an international contingent earlier this month.

"We have decided with our friends to help the Chadians in Chad," Kouchner told the closing news conference of an international meeting on Darfur in Paris.

Kouchner said France would seek United Nations approval for a plan to send gendarmes and police to stabilise and help rebuild eastern Chad, where government forces have been fighting rebels. A French diplomat said the plan was to send troops as well.

Faced with large numbers of refugees arriving from Darfur, and struggling to contain violence linked to the Darfur war and a domestic rebellion, Chad has repeatedly called for international assistance to protect refugees in its eastern areas from what it has called Sudanese aggression.

"France, with ... certain European countries and, I hope, the approval of the European Union ... will propose a force that can rebuild or enable reconstruction," Kouchner said.

He said the proposed security force should wear the blue helmets of the United Nations.

Chad has insisted any international force on its own territory should be made up of police and gendarmes, not soldiers.

Darfur: Rice Keeps Pressure On Sudan

From the AP

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Sudan's "history" of backsliding on commitments means that sanction pressure must be maintained, despite its acceptance of a planned larger peacekeeping force for Darfur.

Rice made the comments at a conference hosted by France to push forward peace efforts in the ravaged Sudanese region. The U.N. chief, Ban Ki-moon, insisted at the meeting that "slow but credible and considerable progress" has recently been made to resolve the crisis.

But Rice said pressure needs to be maintained on the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

"Sudan has a history of agreeing to things and then trying to condition or change them or to backtrack and say 'Well no, we didn't really agree to that,"' Rice said. "We have lost a lot of time while agreements have been made that have not been kept. We can no longer afford a situation in Darfur where agreements are made and not kept."

She added: "Until Sudan has actually carried out the commitments it's taken, I think we have to keep the possibility of consequences on the table."

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have become refugees since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing in response a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed — a charge Sudan denies.

The United Nations and Western governments pressed Sudan for months to accept a plan for a large joint force of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed 7,000-strong African force now in Darfur.

Sudan initially accepted the plan in November but then backtracked, before finally agreeing earlier this month. But many questions remain on how and when the troops will be deployed and how they will be funded.

"There are already (AU) soldiers in Darfur. But these soldiers are badly equipped, they are not paid. We are not going to make progress by increasing the number of soldiers who are unpaid," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged an additional $13.4 million to the existing cash-strapped African Union force. His five-week-old government has made the four-year conflict in Darfur a priority. Spain also pledged $13.5 million, with half for the hybrid force and the rest for humanitarian aid. The EU's development chief, Louis Michel, said it was preparing $40 million in additional humanitarian aid.

Sarkozy, speaking to the conference delegates before their meeting, decried the world's inactivity on Darfur and called for a firm stance against "belligerents who refuse to join the negotiating table."

"Silence is killing," he said. "The lack of decision and the lack of action is unacceptable."

Conference attendee China, viewed as a power broker in Sudan, again came out against sanctions and argued against appeals by some critics for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to force China to get tough with Khartoum.

"Now is not the time to talk about further sanctions," said China's special envoy for Sudan, Liu Giujin. He said any attempted link to the Beijing Olympics was "really unfounded. The basic character of the Olympics is nonpolitical."

Asked by reporters whether the Chinese oil industry's involvement in Sudan kept Beijing from coming down hard, Liu said: "That's baseless, that's unfounded."

Sudan was not invited to the one-day conference, attended by 18 countries, U.N. Secretary-General Ban, the European Union and others. Officials from the Sudanese government in Khartoum had said the meeting could backfire and cause more harm than good.

Notable absentees, other than Sudan, included the African Union and neighboring Chad, which has seen an influx of tens of thousands of people fleeing Darfur and is a key conduit for aid.

Darfur: Good vs. Good

An op-ed by David Rieff in The Los Angeles Times - via ENOUGH

Generally, humanitarian aid groups see nothing wrong with advocacy organizations like Save Darfur campaigning to mobilize world public opinion about the plight of the Darfurians (though some of the mainline relief NGOs, notably Doctors Without Borders, have disputed the assertion that what's going on in Darfur is, in fact, genocide). But they are quick to point out that human rights activists do not remain on the ground in Darfur and do not have the burden of looking after the immediate needs of the refugees and the internally displaced. To the relief groups, the chief danger of an outside military intervention is that, to paraphrase that infamous remark by the American officer in Vietnam, the interveners will destroy Darfur in order to save it.

Pro-intervention advocates in the human rights community, in contrast, tend to take the view that relief workers are being too cautious. They point out that the same anxieties were voiced by many aid groups during the Bosnian war and in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, and that, given Khartoum's refusal to curb its murderous surrogates in Darfur, outside military intervention is the only viable solution both practically and morally. In their view, allowing the current political and military situation to continue so that humanitarian aid can be dispensed may have short-term benefits, but it condemns the Darfurians to a future of endless human destruction. Far from helping, they argue, relief without intervention amounts to keeping people alive now so the Sudanese government forces can kill them later — a Band-Aid on a cancer, as some activists put it.

There is no question that both sides believe they are acting morally. And, in fairness, it should be noted that there are some in the humanitarian aid community who do favor outside intervention, even if they have been reluctant to voice this view publicly.

But even taking these shadings into account, the disagreement is fundamental. It illustrates the sad truth that not only do all good things not go together, but that in fact they can sometimes be in opposition to each other. As the philosopher Hegel observed: "Tragedy is the conflict between two rights."

Of course, whether an international military intervention in Darfur would even be effective is an open question. The international forces would be protecting more than 100 refugee camps in an area the size of France with a force that even the most optimistic estimate places at no more than 30,000 troops. And some people involved in the peace negotiations between Khartoum and the rebels believe that an intervention would solve nothing.

The dispute between advocacy groups and relief organizations, however, is systemic rather than Darfur-specific. Similar tensions existed, for example, between human rights advocates and relief groups in Kosovo at a time when the advocacy groups were calling for stepped-up military action. And in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, feminist groups desperate to see an end to the Taliban's oppression of women clashed repeatedly with aid groups, which viewed any war as likely to cause enormous human suffering.

Starkly put, human rights groups want solutions to crises — including military solutions if necessary — whereas humanitarian relief NGOs seek to palliate the effects of war and ethnic cleansing, and they believe that outside military interventions make their position on the ground untenable because neutrality is at the core of the humanitarian enterprise.

They point out that, in fact, the logic of "humanitarian intervention" is regime change — a charge that at least some advocates do not deny. What is not in dispute is that, in the final analysis, the activist politics of confrontation and the humanitarian politics of palliation are incompatible, much as both sides might wish it otherwise.

Darfur: Meeting Ends Without Concrete Action

From Reuters

An international meeting on Darfur ended on Monday with promises to support peace-keeping efforts and a political process to stop the violence in western Sudan but with few concrete steps.

The nations at the conference, which included major aid donors, the Group of Eight industrialized nations and Sudan's ally China, offered few details of exactly how they hoped to end a conflict that has dragged on for more than four years.

"We really must redouble our efforts, and I think that that was the spirit of today's conference," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters.

She said Sudan must live up to its promise to accept a "hybrid" force of more than 20,000 United Nations and African Union peace-keepers and accused the government in Khartoum of having repeatedly broken its word to end the violence.

Rice also said Khartoum must face "consequences" -- code for new U.N. sanctions -- if it failed to allow the force in.

The aim of the force is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who convened the conference, stressed the importance of finding a political solution, saying: "There will be no humanitarian solution to this conflict. We were talking about politics."

Kouchner backed an U.N.-AU mediation initiative that aims to have all parties to the dispute ready to begin talks around August.

China, which buys oil from Sudan and has been reluctant to press it in public over Darfur, said Khartoum was ready to take part.

"I met with (Sudanese President Omar Hassan) al-Bashir in Sudan. He told me that the Sudanese government actually is ready to come to the negotiating table, at any time, in any place," China's special envoy Liu Guijin told reporters.

Darfur: Hybrid Force Faces Daunting Challenge

From AFP - via POTP

The deployment of the so-called hybrid peacekeeping force in Darfur should see UN troops reinforce the African Union's embattled contingent in Sudan's troubled region but will nevertheless represent a task of unprecedented scale for the continent.

"It's a first, a real life test. One should acknowledge the cooperation between the two institutions. It is important that people take the return of peace to Darfur and Africa in general to heart," said AU spokesman Assane Ba.

According to UN estimates, at least 200,000 people have died of the combined effect of war and famine since the conflict started in Darfur in February 2003. Other sources give a much higher toll but Khartoum disputes the figures.

Following a wave of international public awareness campaigns and intense western diplomatic pressure, Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir last week backed down on a months-old refusal to accept UN peacekeepers on his soil.

The hardline leader has consistently accused the West of seeking to use the UN as a Trojan horse to topple his regime, but a compromise solution was reached whereby the force would be mixed and remain under African command.

The head of UN peacekeeping operations in Africa Dimitri Titov predicted the deployment of the "hybrid" force would be a "lasting, daunting, dangerous operation, (that) will require a lot of dedication."

"It will cost a lot and will need the support of the international community as a whole," he told AFP in Addis Ababa recently.

UN officials have said that the expanded Darfur force will consist of between 17,500 and 19,600 troops, in addition to more than 6,000 police who will help maintain security in the region's displaced person camps where allegations of rape and other abuses remain widespread.

A document drafted jointly by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare defines the mandate and make-up of what will be the largest peacekeeping force in the world.

The proposed mandate states that "the hybrid operation should focus on the protection of civilians, the facilitation of full humanitarian access and the return of refugees and internally-displaced persons to their homes."

"It should also contribute to the restoration of security in Darfur, inter alia, through the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement."

The peace deal was signed by the Sudanese government in May 2006 but only one of three negotiating rebel factions endorsed it. Rebel splinter groups have since flourished and the violence has spiralled.

The document also stipulates that the hybrid force should "take into account security along the borders between the Sudan and Chad and the Central African Republic."

The 7,000 AU peace monitors who were deployed in 2004 have failed to restore stability in Darfur -- a territory roughly the size of France -- and the conflict has started to spill over into Sudan's western neighbours.

"The force's commander, who has to be African, has already been named: it is Nigerian general Martin Luther Agwei, who already heads AMIS (African Mission in Sudan)," Assane Ba told AFP.

"The special representative has also been named: it is former Congolese foreign minister Rodolphe Adada," he added.

The United Nations and African Union -- which once threatened to end its mission for lack of funds and equipment -- have agreed on a three-phase plan to reinforce the beleaguered Darfur AU troops.

The first phase, or "light support package", has already started but the second -- which involves a more substantial UN personnel increase -- has yet to begin.

The hybrid force proper will only come in the third phase, which provides for the deployment of heavy military equipment.

"African troops already on the ground will be integrated in the hybrid force, so we will still have to recruit 13,000 men from the member states," Ba explained.

If Africa fails to provide enough troops, the AU and UN, in consultation with the Sudanese government, will complete the force with other contingents, possibly from Asia.

The mandate of the small AU contingent currently in Darfur was extended for six months Friday as the full deployment of the more robust hybrid force is expected to take several months.

From Deustche Welle

A new international force to end violence in Sudan's Darfur region could be deployed early next year, French Defence Minister Herve Morin said Monday. France is hosting an international conference which brings together China, the United States and 15 other countries to try to bring peace to the troubled region. Morin said French troops are likely to form the largest contingent of the 20,000-strong force to be deployed under the United Nations and the African Union. Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir bowed to months of pressure, and agreed earlier this month to allow the AU-UN force to be deployed in Darfur. At least 200,000 people have been killed and two million driven from their homes since the conflict began in February 2003.

Darfur: Continuing Attacks on Villages

From ACT-Caritas

In South Darfur, another 3,000 people have been forced to flee their homes because of brutal attacks on their villages, adding their anonymous number to the more than 2.5 million others in Darfur that have suffered the same fate. The conflict has killed at least 200,000 people since violence escalated in 2004.

Upon hearing reports that villagers had been forced from their homes in and around Edd el Fursan, because of attacks or for fear of attack, UN agencies and ACT-Caritas carried out an assessment mission in the area last month.

"One village was completely empty," said Simon Egadu, ACT-Caritas Emergency Preparedness and Response Coordinator, who participated in the assessment mission.

The inhabitants of the villages now gather their families under trees in a nearby town.

"On Saturday, we were attacked by people with guns riding in three land cruiser vehicles, and on horses and camels" said one villager. All the other villagers reported the same sequence of events.

Some men and children had poorly bandaged wounds, from bullets that had gone right through a limb as they ran.

"When we were attacked, we just ran in any direction. I have lost a child and my sister. I have not seen them for ten days now," said one woman, weeping.

In the bush just outside another small town, the situation is the same. About 1,700 people from another village camp under trees. Why did they come here? "The Janjaweed" says one man.

The local authorities initially provided some basic assistance with food. But the displaced fear that if organisations help them by providing water, cooking utensils, blankets or other essential items, the armed militias will be tempted to attack and try to steal anything they have.

ACT-Caritas workers say the victims need shelter. They need protection from the sun and heat in the day, and from the wind and cold at night.

"Protection is a critical issue. The people are in fear. Armed men are moving around just some five kilometres away from them, and there are threats that they will be attacked again," said Mr. Egadu.

Many people want to go to Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, where they will be safer and where basic services are better. The rainy season has begun, making travel to remote locations to deliver humanitarian aid to the displaced extremely difficult.

One Omdah (head sheikh) from a neighbouring town and some people in Nyala have sent trucks to the area to collect the people and transport them to Nyala, where they are settling in established camps for internally displaced persons.

However, some villagers report that they have been blocked when trying to travel to Nyala.

The assessment team later met with the local authorities, who said they had not been hindering movement of the displaced in any way. But they did not rule out that another "security body" might be doing so.

With the situation unclear, further assessments in the area will be carried out to determine how to respond. ACT-Caritas is already providing blankets and essential household items for the new arrivals in Al Salam camp outside Nyala.

Darfur: AU Miffed Over France’s Drive

From AFP

France brings the United States, China and some 15 other nations together for a major conference on Monday aimed at launching a new international drive to end atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region.

The meeting comes after Sudan bowed to months of pressure and agreed to the deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur under the United Nations and the African Union.

Khartoum is boycotting the conference, angry that it was not consulted during preparations for the meeting and arguing that the French initiative will unnecessarily duplicate efforts by the UN and the AU.

The African Union is also staying away, sceptical about the meeting's purpose and miffed at being kept out of the planning.

The Paris conference is nevertheless seen as an opportunity to help end the conflict in Darfur, which has pitted a rebel insurgency against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and its proxy militia known as the Janjaweed, whose leader stands accused of war crimes.

Darfur: Sarkozy Opens Meeting, Says 'Silence Kills'

From Reuters

Saying "silence kills", French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged delegates to a meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur on Monday to find a way to stop the violence ravaging Sudan's vast west.

France gathered senior officials from more than a dozen countries at a Paris meeting aimed at galvanizing international efforts to stabilise the western Sudanese region, where the United States has declared that genocide has taken place.

Sudan, which did not attend the meeting, agreed earlier this month to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police but many diplomats doubt it will keep its word.

The aim of the force is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.

"As human beings, and as politicians, we must resolve the crisis in Darfur," Sarkozy told the officials gathered at France's Elysee presidential palace.

"Silence kills," he added. "We want to mobilize the international community to say 'enough is enough'."

Sarkozy said he hoped to strengthen international efforts to broker a political solution, something U.S. officials say is vital to help the proposed hybrid force stabilize the region.

He also said the existing force of 7,000 AU troops, which is widely seen as ineffective and is to be reinforced by the proposed hybrid force, must get more funding. He said France was willing to contribute roughly 10 million euros ($13.46 million).

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the meeting was "clearly about political support for the initiatives taken by the African Union and the United Nations".

Darfur: Meeting Seeks to Find Plan for Darfur

From AP

French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged swift international action Monday toward speeding up deployment of troops in Darfur, as key world players met to try to consolidate efforts and resources for the ravaged Sudanese region.

Sudan was not invited to the one-day Paris conference, organized by a new French government that has made the four-year conflict in Darfur a top priority. The meetings come after Sudan agreed _ under international pressure _ to allow the deployment of a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in the region.

Sarkozy pledged an additional $13.4 million to the existing _ and cash-strapped _ African Union force. "Silence is killing," in Darfur, Sarkozy said in greeting participants to the conference.

"The lack of decision and the lack of action is unacceptable," he added.

He praised Sudan for agreeing to the hybrid force but insisted, "We must be firm toward belligerents who refuse to join the negotiating table."

Stepping up pressure for progress, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday night that the international community has fallen down on the job in Darfur.

"I have seen firsthand the devastation and the difficult circumstances in which people live in Darfur, and I will be very frank," Rice said after meeting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in Paris. "I do not think that the international community has really lived up to its responsibilities there."

Rice welcomed the fresh energy France's new conservative-led leadership has put to the Darfur cause. She and Sarkozy met Tuesday morning, their first face-to-face talks since Sarkozy took over last month from Jacques Chirac, who often had prickly relations with the United States.

French officials said they hope to mobilize the international community at what they called a "pivotal moment," following the Sudanese government's agreement earlier this month to allow the deployment of a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in the region.

Details about the composition, mandate and timetable of the joint force are expected to top discussions at Monday's meetings.

Sarkozy praised Sudan for agreeing to the new hybrid force but insisted, "We must be firm toward belligerents who refuse to join the negotiating table."

"There are now 19 rebel groups in Sudan and we must exert important pressure so they return to the negotiating table," Koucher added.

More than 200,000 people have died in the Darfur region of western Sudan and 2.5 million have become refugees since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan's government is accused of unleashing in response a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed _ a charge Sudan denies.

The U.N. and Western governments had pressed Sudan for months to accept a plan for a large joint force of U.N. and AU peacekeepers to replace the overwhelmed 7,000-strong African force now in Darfur.

Sudan initially accepted the plan in November but then backtracked, before finally agreeing earlier this month. Rice warned Sudan's government not to renege on its agreement.

Officials from the Sudanese government in Khartoum have said Monday's conference could backfire and cause more harm than good.

The head of Darfur Emergency Group, an umbrella organization representing French groups lobbying for an end to the conflict disagreed.

"Perhaps those at the conference will be able to say certain things they wouldn't be able to say in front of the Sudanese," he said.

Kouchner insisted Sunday, "This is not a 'peacemaking' meeting, but on the contrary, a meeting to support the international efforts that have been deployed."

Kouchner, a Socialist who co-founded aid group Doctors Without Borders, said "humanitarian work ... is not enough." He also noted that the world powers must agree to support the U.N. force financially.

"If there are 20,000 forces who are in the hybrid force, whoever they are, they must be paid," he said.

The conference will include Rice, Kouchner, officials from the United Nations, the Arab League and the European Union, as well as 11 European countries, Egypt and China.

Notable absences, other than Sudan, include the African Union and neighboring Chad, which has seen an influx of tens of thousands of people fleeing Darfur and is a key conduit for aid.

China is viewed as a power broker in Sudan because of its heavy investment in the country. As one of the five U.N. Security Council permanent members with veto power, China has long opposed harsh measures against Sudan over Darfur.

Beijing has dramatically stepped up efforts to end the violence in Darfur in the wake of mounting criticism that threatened to taint the 2008 Olympic Games, which it is hosting.

China has not received a formal request to send soldiers for the AU-U.N. peacekeeping mission, but officials have said the country is open to contributing troops.

France had long been less vocal than the United States, Britain and others in pushing for peace in the region, but Sarkozy has made Darfur a foreign policy priority since taking office last month.

Darfur: Rice Faults World for Failing to End Killing

From Reuters

The international community has failed in its responsibility to halt the killings in Darfur and must find a way to force Sudan to accept an international force to end the violence, the United States said on Sunday.

Speaking on the eve of an international meeting on the humanitarian crisis in the western Sudanese region, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized major powers for not having ended violence that is now in its fifth year.

"I will be very frank. I do not think that the international community has really lived up to its responsibilities here," Rice told reporters at a news conference with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

"Ultimately this is going to come down to will," Rice added. "Are we prepared to make the difficult choices in the international system that will, I believe, persuade and compel Khartoum to do what it must?"

Sudan on June 12 agreed to a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 troops and police, but many diplomats doubt Khartoum will keep its word.

The aim of the force is to stop the violence in Darfur, where international experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been expelled from their homes in more than four years of strife. Sudan says 9,000 people have died.

The Darfur problem dates back to early 2003 when non-Arab rebels took up arms, accusing the government of not heeding their plight in the remote, arid region. Khartoum mobilized Arab militia, known locally as Janjaweed, to quell the revolt.

The Janjaweed embarked on a campaign of killing, pillaging and rape. In the past year rebel groups have fought each other and also attacked civilians.

In 2004, the United States called the violence genocide, a term Khartoum has rejected.

France has convened an international meeting on Darfur that is expected to draw senior officials from nations including the United States, Egypt and China, which has been reluctant to impose sanctions on Khartoum, one of its oil suppliers.

"I know that it has been going on for years. So what? Is that a reason to not be interested and let the massacres go on forever? Even if the massacres were bigger, they must be stopped," Kouchner said.

Kouchner said Monday's meeting had three aims: to back the U.N.-AU effort, to offer political backing to those trying to bring together the rebel groups, and to offer financial support for the planned 20,000-strong hybrid international force.

Diplomats are dismayed Sudan has sent mixed signals about the force, saying it should be under the AU's command and control rather than that of the United Nations, and suggesting it should chiefly be comprised of African forces. The existing force of about 7,000 AU troops is widely seen as ineffective.

Earlier, Rice said she hoped China would bring more pressure to bear on the Khartoum government.

"I'd like to have everybody, the Chinese included, tell the Sudanese in no uncertain terms that there is no other option and that they need to stop agreeing to terms and then trying to scale them back," Rice told reporters as she flew to Paris.

The United States has been pushing for a new Security Council resolution against Sudan, something China has resisted. Rice suggested no decisions on this were likely soon.

Rice said she was grateful to new French President Nicolas Sarkozy for having convened Monday's meeting. U.S. officials hope it may herald an improved relationship with France.

The United States had deep differences with former French President Jacques Chirac, whose opposition to the invasion of Iraq embittered relations with the Bush administration.

DRC: A ‘Painful Way to Die’

The latest from Nick Kristof

If you think you face tough choices, imagine you were living here in eastern Congo.

“If women go to the fields, they’re raped,” said Shabain Katuija, a local man. “If they don’t go to the fields, they starve.”

So why don’t men go to the fields instead? Olivier Sbasoro, a villager here, explained: “They rape the women, but it’s worse for the men, because they kill them or kidnap them to make them slaves.”

On this “win a trip” journey through central Africa with a teacher and a student, we’re visiting the forgotten war inside Congo. The death toll has already reached four million, making this the most lethal conflict since World War II.

The warfare has also caused a vast and potentially rich land to sink into hunger and poverty. Roads have returned to jungle, so as the rest of the world has gotten smaller, Congo has become bigger. When foreigners drove into a village that had been cut off by the insecurity, the local people hadn’t seen a vehicle for decades — and marveled at what they called the “walking house.”

After 10 years of warfare in Congo, much of the country is finally enjoying real progress, especially since U.N.-sponsored elections last year. But here in eastern Congo, war is ratcheting up again.

Grim shantytowns have been set up for some of the 150,000 people who have been driven from their homes by fighting since January. At one of these camps, I asked a chief if I could talk to a woman who had been raped recently. He introduced me to Angella Mapendo, whose husband had been killed and who was pregnant as a result of rape by soldiers.

When I had finished hearing Angella’s story, I looked up — and there was a growing line of other women who had been raped, all waiting to tell me their stories.

The tension is thick around Jomba, where a priest was executed recently for showing compassion and leadership. When we drove into Jomba, local people crowded around us to describe kidnappings, rape and murder by soldiers of various loyalties.

Peasants in some villages are now sleeping out in the bush every night, for fear that soldiers will raid their houses. At a local elementary school, I asked the children in one class how many had lost their fathers. Too many hands went up for me to count.

(Many of the rapes and killings are by soldiers loyal to Laurent Nkunda. He’s the warlord whose mountain lair I wrote about a week ago.)

You can see videos of these sights, and read the terrific blogs of Leana Wen and Will Okun, the student and teacher accompanying me, at nytimes.com/twofortheroad.

The U.N. World Food Program and a tiny number of aid groups are struggling to keep people alive. The effort is led by groups of heroic Catholic nuns and priests, supported by the aid group Caritas.

This war staggers on in part because the suffering here hasn’t registered on the international conscience, and because it has been allowed to fester and continue. Barack Obama and Sam Brownback are among the few prominent American politicians who have focused on the war here.

There’s no simple solution to the conflict, but we can lean on Rwanda to stop supporting its proxy force in eastern Congo, and also to work harder to repatriate Hutus who have destabilized Congo since they fled here after the genocide in 1994. We can push a peace process. We can support the U.N. peacekeepers. We can help with the reform and training of Congo’s security forces. And a six-hour visit by Condi Rice would help put the crisis on the map.

Of the many people I’ve met here, one I can’t get out of my mind is Cecilie Nyirahabinana, a young woman with a shrinking family. A few years ago, fighting led to famine and her two oldest children died. Her youngest, Anita, was still a baby and survived on Cecilie’s breast milk.

Then a couple of months ago, soldiers shot her husband dead. Since then, Cecilie has had nothing to feed Anita but green leaves.

So Anita is now skeletal and barely able to move, having slowly starved for months. Aya Schneerson, who runs the World Food Program office in the area, explained what Anita is going through: “These kids are in constant pain,” she said. “It’s a very painful way to die.”

And the way things are going, hundreds of thousands more will die that way.

Sudan: China Focuses on Oil Wells, Not Local Needs

From The Christian Science Monitor

Li Haowei's girlfriend gave him a silver ring when he left Liaoning, his home province in China, nine months ago. Before he boarded the flight to Sudan, Mr. Li had never even left Liaoning before. "You are so lucky," his girlfriend said, then, enviously.

"I was happy to go abroad and see the world," says Li, an accountant for Petrodar, a multinational oil consortium. "But I did not know enough to know I did not want to come here."

Paloich is not a particularly welcoming place. The heat surrounds and suffocates you like a plastic bag. The dust in the dry season sticks to your eyelashes and fills your nostrils. Mosquitoes buzz in your ears relentlessly.

Li is making three times the salary he would at home. But he misses his girlfriend, he says, twisting his ring around. He misses Liaoning. He misses real Chinese food. Sometimes he can't sleep. Fear of malaria is a constant. He broke down crying when he read a tender letter from his mother last month. He does not like it here.

The local Sudanese are not too keen on his presence here, either.

Sudan's oil production averages 536,000 barrels a day, according to estimates by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Other estimates say it is closer to 750,000 barrels a day. And there is an estimated 5 billion-barrel reservoir of oil beneath Sudan's 1 million-square-mile surface, almost all of it in the south of the country, an area inhabited mainly by Christian and animist black Africans who fought a 21-year civil war against the Arab-dominated Muslim government of the north.

The vast majority of this oil, 64 percent, is sold to China, now the world's second-largest consumer of oil. And while neither Khartoum, China, nor Petrodar release any statistics – this is generally believed to be an oil deal worth at least $2 billion a year.

China's National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is the majority shareholder in both Petrodar and the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, two of the biggest oil consortiums in Sudan.

CNPC has invested billions in oil-related infrastructure here in Paloich, including the 900-mile pipeline from the Paloich oil fields to the tanker terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a tarmac road leading to Khartoum, and a new airport with connecting flights to Beijing.

But they have not invested in much else here.

Locals live in meager huts, eating peanuts with perch fished out of the contaminated Nile. There is no electricity. A Swiss charity provides healthcare. An American aid group flies in food and mosquito nets. Most children do not go to school. There is no work to be found. Petrodar, for one, has its own workers – almost all of whom are foreigners (mostly Chinese, Malaysians, and Qataris) or Sudanese northerners. The consortium hires Paloich residents only rarely, for menial jobs.

It's a picture of underdevelopment not unusual in Sudan's semiautonomous south. While some pockets – like the regional capital of Juba and the bigger towns of Rumbek and Wau – have seen some economic revival since the signing of the 2005 peace agreement, the majority of the south remains mired in abject poverty.

Locals blame their lot on oppression by Sudan's Islamist government and the long war with the north. But they also blame the Chinese.

"[The Chinese] moved us away so we would not see what was going on. They were stealing our oil and they knew it," says Abraham Thonchol, a rebel-turned-pastor who grew up near Paloich. "Oil is valuable and we are not idiots. We were expecting something."

US-based Chevron was the first oil company to arrive here, setting up operations in the 1980s. "They employed us," says Mr. Thonchol. "We helped with the drilling, drove them around, and worked as cooks. "

The second group of oilmen to show up was not as benevolent, say many locals. Thonchol's cousin, Peter Nyok, a 6-foot, 6-inch, member of the Dinka tribe with traditional lines carved on his forehead and six missing front teeth, says it took a while for locals to differentiate between Westerners – and the Chinese that came later. "They looked like whites to us. We could not detect any difference, except, maybe, that they were shorter," he says. "But then we found they behaved differently."

Chased out by civil war in the mid 1980s and '90s, and later kept away by pressure from human rights groups, Chevron and other Western companies left the oil fields for others. Canadian Talisman Energy, faced with a divestment campaign, was forced to sell its 25-percent stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company in 2002.

Chinese firms were more than happy to fill the void.

But the Chinese operations were marked "from the beginning," by a "deep complicity in gross human rights violations, scorched-earth clearances of the indigenous population," says Sudan activist Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Giving expert testimony before the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission last August, Mr. Reeves claimed the Chinese gave direct assistance to Khartoum's military forces which, in turn, burned villages, chased locals away from their homes, and harmed the environment while prospecting for oil.

Brad Phillips, director of Persecution International, an aid group working in South Sudan, has seen the destruction firsthand. "The Chinese are equal partners with Khartoum when it comes to exploiting resources and locals here," he says. "Their only interest here is their own." He would love to see the Chinese sponsor a school here, he says, or a clinic, or an agricultural program, or "anything for the people." But there is nothing like that in sight. Just miles of desolate land.

"The Chinese simply do not care about us," says Martin Buywomo, Paloich's mayor. "They have no contact. They never even came to my tent to pay respects. They think we are lesser people." A member of the Shilluk tribe who attended British mission schools, Mr. Buywomo puts down the worn copy of George Eliot's 19th-century classic "Silas Marner" he is reading and continues sadly. "We see them in their trucks but they overlook us. If they saw us dying on the road, they would overlook us."

Buywomo rearranges the Chinese-made plastic pink flowers on his desk. "This is colonialism all over again."

Int'l Justice: Taylor Boycotts Trial Again

From Reuters

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's war crimes trial was delayed until next week after he failed to show up in court on Monday, saying he lacked the money for an adequate defence team.

Taylor, who is charged with instigating murder, rape and mutilation during Sierra Leone's civil war in a quest for the country's diamonds, boycotted the start of his trial in June.

He sacked his lawyer and declared the trial would not be fair, adding in a letter he intended to defend himself.

Judge Julia Sebutinde expressed frustration, not only with Taylor but with officials with the U.N.-backed special tribunal for Sierra Leone.

"The accused does not have the option to appear before this court as and when he chooses to," Judge Sebutinde said.

But she added adequate resources must be provided in the interests of a fair trial and she ordered the court to ensure Taylor had another four people boosting his defence team, including a lead counsel, by July 31.

"We have frowned upon undue delay in this court. That it would come from an institution within this court is really regrettable," she said.

The court's principal defender, Vincent Nmehielle, said Taylor also wanted to avoid undue delay and although he had been persuaded to accept a lawyer rather than defend himself, there were not enough funds from the court to hire the right calibre of lawyer.

Earlier this month the president of the court and its prosecutor told the U.N. Security Council available funds would be exhausted by November and another $60 million was needed from voluntary contributions.

The prosecution will be allowed to begin presenting its case on July 3.

Darfur: How an NBA Star Became an Activist

A new piece from Eric Reeves in The New Republic

alking with sports writers about professional athletes, and NBA players in particular, has been an eye-opener for me. Their disappointment with these gifted young men--nearly all in their twenties and early thirties--is palpable. Not in their physical prowess, of course, but over their lack of interest in anything but themselves and their salaries. Which is why whenever they do something off the court worthy of note, it's headline news. So it was that Ira Newble, reserve small forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers, became, in sports pages around the country, the most celebrated basketball player in America.

And rightly so. Newble has fashioned of twelve Cavalier teammates a "dream team of conscience"--professional athletes from around the world who've all signed a powerful letter to the Chinese government concerning its support for Sudan in its ongoing genocide in Darfur:

We, as basketball players in the NBA 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. Ethnically-targeted human destruction of Darfur's African tribal populations has entered its fifth year, and still the world has not responded--has not provided protection for millions of vulnerable civilians or for the world's largest and most endangered humanitarian operation.

China cannot be a legitimate host to the premiere international event in the sporting world--the Summer Olympic Games--while it remains complicit in the terrible suffering and destruction that continues to this day.

Published in May, the origins of this letter go back to this past March, when Newble happened to read an article about my work on Darfur in USA Today. On the road, no doubt with many more interesting opportunities at hand, Newble took note of the article and sent me an e-mail expressing an interest in getting involved. Given the huge popularity of basketball in China, I suggested that a letter to Beijing's leaders from some of the NBA's stars might prove an effective way to raise awareness about China's role in perpetrating the genocide in Darfur. There were few other steps from our first communication to his remarkable open letter.

It's been an interesting experience to have a professional athlete reach out to me. None ever had before, and it never occurred to me that one might. Celebrating athletes was always a one-way street for me (focused most intensely on my boyhood hero, Sandy Koufax). I met Newble in person for the first time this month on the eve of the Cavaliers' fourth (and, alas, concluding) game of the NBA Finals. The next night, before the game, we gathered together with a group of about 15 southern Sudanese "lost boys," primarily young Dinka men from Bahr el-Ghazal Province, whom Ira was hosting. As it happened, I'd either traveled to or flown over the villages and towns of origin of every one of these young men, something that seemed thoroughly astonishing to them.

Newble and I don't have much in common in our journeys to Darfur advocacy. Mine has involved eight years of research on Sudan, travel to the region, and work in the trenches of advocacy, while his was more serendipitous, an outgrowth of his own personal morality and determination not to exist solely within the NBA's bubble. But Newble's father was part of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and this certainly helped define Newble's sense of himself and his obligations. His father continues to loom large in his life and his decisions, and he was certainly proud when Newble declared of the genocide in Darfur during a recent interview, "It's so much bigger than basketball, bigger than sports, and it's bigger than the money." Sentiments I know are heartfelt on Newble's part, however unusual sports writers may find them.

To all this there will be the familiar sniggers. Why can't Americans respond effectively to serious foreign policy issues without involvement by celebrities, whether from the sports or entertainment worlds? Why should Ira Newble have a voice that matters if the issue really is "so much bigger than basketball"? I'll be the first to say that I wish it were otherwise, that we lived in a political culture in which the driving force was always a broadly informed electorate placing concerted moral pressure on policymakers to do what is truly in our national interest--and that "national interest" might be conceived in terms richer and more comprehensive than the withered realpolitik of the Bush administration. But I don't hope to live so long.

And one can't help but wonder, given American political culture at present, what the effect of a voice such as Newble's might have been if heard during the 22 years of north/south conflict in Sudan, during which some 2.5 million people lost their lives and as many as 5 million human beings were displaced from their homes. In 1998, Doctors Without Borders declared that the humanitarian crisis growing out of this war was "the most under-reported in the world." When The New Yorker bucked the trend and published a superb piece of reportage about the conflict, it did so under the simple title "The Invisible War."

Ending a grim genocide by attrition in Darfur is not the responsibility of people like Ira Newble; but nor should anyone sniff contemptuously at efforts by professional athletes who decide that they will use their claim upon public attention to highlight human suffering and destruction in the world. When such athletes are as intelligent, committed, and generous of spirit as Newble, then the real applause should begin.

Darfur: China Will Weigh Sending Troops

From the AP

China's special envoy on Darfur said yesterday that his country would seriously consider sending troops for a peacekeeping mission in the war-torn Sudanese region, and he insisted Beijing was doing its best to help solve the conflict.

Liu Guijin lashed out at critics who have accused China of backing Sudan's government because of Chinese oil interests there. Actress Mia Farrow and other activists have branded the 2008 Beijing Games the "genocide Olympics," trying to force China into pressuring Sudan's leaders.

"To link the Chinese corporations' involvement in the oil sector with loss of life in Darfur is baseless," Liu said.

China's heavy investment has caused it to be viewed as a power broker in African countries such as Sudan, which exports two-thirds of its oil output to China. As one of the five U.N. Security Council permanent members with veto power, China has opposed harsh measures against Sudan over the Darfur conflict.

Liu defended Chinese efforts to bring calm to Darfur. "Even the United States has to admit that we've played a positive role," he said. "We've tried our best."

He said China had been instrumental in achieving a diplomatic breakthrough this month, when Sudan's government finally agreed to let a force of U.N. and African Union peacekeepers deploy in Darfur.

The joint mission is now scheduled to deploy in coming months in an attempt to end fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people and made 2.5 million refugees in Darfur since 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated government.

China has not received a formal request to send soldiers for the 19,000-person peacekeeping mission, but is "open and sincere to making its contribution," Liu said.

"We will study the request carefully and seriously," he said, adding that it was "a strong sign" that China already had committed 275 military engineers to the U.N.'s current buildup in Darfur.

However, he warned that "any kind of peacekeeping mission will be useless" if it does not have the support of the Sudanese government.

Liu predicted that Sudan would open a new round of peace talks with the Darfur rebel groups "sometime in August." One faction signed a peace deal last year, but most groups continued to fight.

Chad: Government, Rebels Hold Tripoli Peace Talks

From Reuters

Chad's government and rebel leaders gathered in Tripoli on Friday for Libyan-brokered peace talks aimed at ending an insurgency against President Idriss Deby's rule, rebel chiefs and Libyan officials said.

A coalition of Chadian rebels have been fighting a hit-and-run guerrilla war for well over a year against Deby's forces in eastern Chad, which is also hit by a spillover of refugees and Arab Janjaweed raiders from Sudan's Darfur region.

The bloody cycle of violence has included attacks on major towns and a rebel raid last year on Chad's capital N'Djamena.

Timan Erdimi, who forms part of the anti-Deby coalition, told Reuters by telephone from Tripoli that he and other rebel leaders were due to start talks on Saturday with a government delegation led by interim Prime Minister Adoum Younousmi.

"Deby has always refused to negotiate but, following pressure from Libya, he has agreed to talks," Erdimi said.

"We never wanted to negotiate but we've been asked by 'The Guide' (Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi) to do so and that's why we're here."

The rebels want Deby, who seized power in Chad in a 1990 eastern revolt and won a poll last year boycotted by opponents, to agree to a national political dialogue that would lead to early, free elections.

"We carried weapons only because the roads to peace were blocked before us," said Hassan Eljenadi of the Chadian National Reconciliation Movement, one of four rebel factions attending the Tripoli talks. "We came here not to surrender but for a brave reconciliation. If we don't find this, our forces are ready."

Foreign aid groups attending several hundred thousand Sudanese refugees and Chadian civilians displaced by fighting in the east say violence has eased in recent weeks, partly because of peace pacts between Chad and Sudan brokered by Gaddafi and Saudi Arabia.

N'Djamena and Khartoum have in the past accused each other of supporting rebel groups opposed to their respective governments.

While keeping up a military offensive against the insurgents, Deby has also tried to coax them into laying down their arms. In December, he signed a peace deal with one rebel chief, Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim, and made him defence minister.

"Those who have rights can enjoy them. Those who want to be politicians can form a peaceful opposition," Chad's Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi told Reuters in Tripoli.

Relief workers are hoping Sudan's recent acceptance of a strong joint AU-U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur will also help to ease the conflict in eastern Chad.

Darfur: U.S. Praises France's Sarkozy

From Reuters

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has helped create a better climate between the United States and Europe and could help a diplomatic effort to support Iraq, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried told a newspaper.

"You couldn't say bilateral relations were bad before Sarkozy, but now with Sarkozy and (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel, I think we'll have a solid core," he told French daily Le Monde in an interview published on Friday.

Fried's comments come ahead of a visit to France by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will join a meeting of the International Contact Group on Sudan/Darfur and hold talks with visiting Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Relations between Washington and Paris were badly damaged by disagreements over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which was strongly opposed by France. But both sides have tried for improvement.

Fried praised Sarkozy, who was elected last month, and new Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

"Everyone has been impressed by the energy shown by President Sarkozy, Kouchner and their teams to push certain issues forward," he said.

"Everything that Sarkozy and his government have done in foreign policy recently, the proposal on Darfur and the proposal on Kosovo at the G8, have been quite good," he said.

Int'l Justice: War Crimes Tribunal To Reconvene on Case Against Charles Taylor

From VOA

The first international trial of an African leader is set to reconvene June 25th, despite a faltering start after the defendant, former Liberian President Charles Taylor, refused to show up in court.

Undeterred, prosecutors at the U.N.'s special tribunal for Sierra Leone are preparing to call more than a hundred witnesses to its temporary base in the Hague. Some are expected to testify anonymously, for fear of retribution. Nina-Maria Potts reports.

The face of a warlord, now fallen.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor had escaped prosecution for years. Now he is in The Hague, transferred there from Sierra Leone, amid fears a trial in West Africa would destabilize the region.

He stands accused of horrific crimes, linked to his backing of Sierra Leone rebels during more than a decade of violent conflict from 1991 to 2002

He is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and has pleaded not guilty to accusations of murder, rape, terrorism and other atrocities.

Prosecutors say Taylor provided weapons and ammunition to rebels in return for diamonds plundered from Sierra Leone's mines.

Still, Taylor is defiant, facing down international justice in a letter, delivered to the court by his now ex-lawyer, Kharim Khan. "Mr. Taylor states: I am driven to the conclusion I will not receive a fair trial before the Special Court at this point. It is therefore with great regret that I must decline to attend hearings in this case until adequate time and facilities provided to my defense team, and until my other long-standing and reasonable complaints are dealt with. It follows that I must terminate instructions to my legal representative in this matter. "

International justice brings international problems, such as transferring an entire legal process abroad.

Darfur: Sanctions Threat Counterproductive, Says SA

From AFP

The continued threat of sanctions against Sudan will only hamper progress towards deploying a hybrid African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force to Darfur, the government said on Thursday.

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad told a news conference that sanction threats against Khartoum over delays in allowing the force were "surprising" and unhelpful.

"It is surprising to hear strident calls for sanctions against Sudan. We believe the threat of sanctions will create obstacles to making progress on Darfur," Pahad said.

"We believe as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that there are positive developments on Darfur and we must build on these," said Pahad.

The Sudanese government had previously endorsed only logistical support from the UN for the existing 7 000-strong AU force, which has struggled to patrol a region the size of France.

But South Africa's ambassador to the UN, Dumisani Kumalo, announced after talks with Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir last weekend that Khartoum had raised no objections to the deployment of a beefed-up force, which would include UN troops as well as the Africans.

However, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said on Monday in Pretoria that the threat of sanctions against Sudan would only be lifted when Khartoum makes good on its pledge to allow the force into Darfur.

Previous promises from Bashir had come to nothing and only actions, not words, would suffice, said Frazer, who is the top US diplomat for Africa.

Pahad said the South African government was considering how it could accommodate calls to contribute more troops to Sudan's troubled western region of Darfur where, according to UN figures, more than 200 000 people have died and more than two million been displaced in the past four years.

Khartoum has always disputed those figures as exaggerated.

The minister expressed the hope that African nations would be able to provide the 17 000 peacekeepers requested by the UN Security Council.

Pahad said South Africa was consulting with the AU and the UN about supplying more troops to the African Mission in Sudan.

"In principle we will see how we can best contribute to the hybrid force. There is a general feeling that Africa can supply the troop contingency required for Darfur," said Pahad.

"If not, there should be no objection to using troops from Latin America and Asia," he said.

Darfur: War Worsening Environment Damage

From the AP

Decades of drought helped trigger Darfur's violence as rival groups fought over scarce water and arable land.

Now, experts fear the war and its refugee crisis are making the environment even worse, leaving the land increasingly uninhabitable and intensifying tensions with no end to the drought in sight.

Darfur's tragedy could be repeated in much of North Africa and the Middle East, experts fear, because growing populations are straining a very limited water supply. Data show rainfall steadily declining in the region, possibly because of weather changes linked to global warming.

"The consciousness of the world on the issue of climate change has to change fast," said Muawia Shaddad of the Sudan Environment Conservation Society. "Darfur is just an early warning."

Darfur's ethnic African farmers and tribes of mostly Arab nomads had long been competing for the region's meager water and land resources, experts say. But the severe droughts of the 1980s and meager rainfall since then sharpened the conflict between the two populations.

When African tribes took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated government in 2003, the Arabs in Darfur were willing allies of the government because they already were competing with the farmers for water.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote in a Washington Post editorial earlier this month that the world must learn from the Darfur conflict, including the effects that global warming have on hopes for peace.

Darfur is usually discussed "in a convenient military and political shorthand — an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers," Ban wrote. "Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic."

"In Darfur, we really saw it coming," Shaddad said, pointing to a chart measuring annual rainfall in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur.

The chart shows average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly half since figures were first collected in 1917.

In 2003, when the large-scale conflict began, 7.48 inches of rain fell on El Fasher. Meanwhile, Darfur's population has increased sixfold over the past four decades, to 6.5 million.

That created a strain on resources beyond the capability of the tribes to manage.

As the desert closed in, Arab nomads drifted farther south, bringing their herds of cattle toward lands that African villagers were farming.

Those herds destroyed fields and worsened soil erosion. With land being made unfit for farming, the Africans rebelled when the central government in Khartoum seemed indifferent to their plight.

On a recent morning in southern Darfur, camels grazed aimlessly on what used to be fertile fields. Village after village in the area lay destroyed and abandoned, with houses plundered and water pumps knocked down along the dirt track road winding across the arid landscape.

Nomads have cut down many of the trees in the war zone. Trees are crucial to farmers, because they help stabilize the soil and provide shade for crops. Without them, it will be even harder for farmers now in refugee camps to return to their villages.

In such a fragile environment, even steps designed to reduce human suffering are causing environmental problems.

Sudan: The Oil Factor

From the Economist

FEW countries owe so much, over so little time, to the magic of black gold as does Sudan. From near-bankruptcy in the early 1990s, Sudan has trebled its GDP in the past seven years thanks to the discovery and exploitation of oil; it is now one of Africa's fastest-growing economies. Sparkling office blocks are beginning to crowd the skyline of Khartoum, the capital. Oil has also brought vital political dividends. China, which buys about 80% of Sudan's oil exports, has proved a loyal friend at the UN when Sudan has been criticised for murder and mayhem in its Darfur region.

With so much resting on oil, the government of President Omar al-Bashir likes to talk up the industry's prospects. Production now stands at 480,000 barrels a day, with proven reserves estimated at 1.6 billion barrels. The bullish oil minister, Awad Ahmed al-Jaz, often says he expects output to rise to about 1m b/d next year.

But this scenario may be too rosy. The country's original and most reliable oilfields, which produce valuable low-sulphur crude marketed as Nile Blend, are maturing. Their output dropped from a peak of 300,000-odd b/d in early 2005 to 254,000 b/d in the first quarter of this year. Prospects for pushing production back up using better oil-recovery techniques are poor, and this dip will be only partly offset by output from new fields that have begun to be exploited in Sudan's south (see map).

For though oil from a number of new fields began to flow last year, there have been setbacks. Much of the new oil is of inferior quality, selling for less than a third of average international prices. Sudan has some scope to raise production from these fields, but it has less incentive to do so. So exploration for further reserves (and even for offshore gas) is being conducted across the country. In recent months, a flurry of new oil concessions have been awarded.

But many of them have been granted to small and inexperienced operators, often partners of local companies tied to the government. A consortium exploring one southern block is made up wholly of Sudanese firms. A new concession in north Darfur was also given last year to six companies from Arab countries. In both, a substantial stake is held by Hi-Tech Petroleum Group, a company set up by a former oil minister, Abdel Aziz Osman. This firm, in which a brother of President Bashir has a senior post, was recently named as a target of new American sanctions against Sudan.

Many of the big Western oil companies are being scared off by the prospect of more sanctions and humanitarian divestment campaigns over Darfur. In 2003 a Canadian firm, Talisman, was forced out by pressure from campaigners. Similar reasons were cited for the departure of the Cliveden Group, a Swiss firm, last year. There is speculation that Marathon, an American oil company, may dispose of its 32.5% share in Block B, in southern Sudan.

Without the big internationals' wealth and experience, smaller local and regional players may struggle. If, for example, they have to build export facilities, the lengths of pipelines in a country the size of western Europe are daunting. And any company wanting a secure export route in case the southern half of the country chose to secede in a referendum promised in 2011 would have to lay a pipeline to the Kenyan port of Lamu—another huge challenge.

Uganda: Government to Seek Review of ICC Indictments

From IRIN

Uganda will "engage" the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek a review of the indictments for war crime charges against leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), internal affairs minister Ruhakana Rugunda said.

"The government will engage the ICC and present to it concrete evidence of agreed solutions to peace, impunity and reconciliation because we also don't want to condone impunity," Rugunda, the head of the government's delegation to peace talks with the LRA in Juba, Southern Sudan, told IRIN on 21 June.

The request to the ICC will be made only after the government and LRA reach a comprehensive agreement on how to end two decades of conflict that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more in northern Uganda, Rugunda said.

ICC officials could not be immediately reached for comment. The ICC has indicted five LRA commanders on charges of war crimes, including murder and abduction of civilians. They include LRA chief Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti.

The LRA has insisted the ICC drops the indictments in favour of Uganda’s legal system, including the traditional Acholi justice system known as Mato Oput.

"We are not against the ICC; it is an institution that was started to help in certain circumstances, but the ICC has to give peace a chance. It is the Ugandan government that took that case to the ICC and if we agree on the mechanism of accountability and reconciliation they should be the ones to go back to the ICC and ask for review," the LRA chief negotiator, Martin Ojul, said on 21 June.

Rugunda said both sides were addressing the issue of accountability and reconciliation on the understanding that "those who committed crimes would admit [to] them and ask for forgiveness from the people, who are willing to forgive. Reparations, including compensation and helping victims, would be made thereafter," he added.

Darfur: Rebels Say Khartoum Attacks Its Forces, AU Observers Attacked

From Reuters

Darfur rebels on Thursday accused government troops of attacking their forces close to the Chadian border, saying three civilians were abducted following the raid.

African Union forces were also attacked, by unknown armed men. Two soldiers were stabbed and two rifles stolen in the Chadian town of Abeche just over the border, an AU spokesman said.

Around 7,000 AU forces are trying to stem Darfur's violence which has spilled across the border. But since an AU-mediated peace deal last year, Darfur's conflict has descended into chaos.

"Government forces attacked us on Monday evening near Sirba," local commander from the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) Abdel Majid Duda Nur told Reuters by telephone from the Sudan/Chad border.

"We pushed them back and took two vehicles from them as well as guns. We killed 10 of their soldiers," he added.

Sudanese army officials were not immediately available to comment.

Nur said militias, mobilised by the government and known locally as Janjaweed, were massing to attack Sirba town.

The three abductees, Adam Ishaq Gremer, Yehia Musa Zakaria and a woman, Fatouma Yagoub Dagash, were fleeing Sirba town in West Darfur towards the state capital el-Geneina town.

"We do not know where they are," Nur added.

Since last year's deal, signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions, Darfur insurgents have split more than a dozen times and hijackings of aid convoys in the world's largest humanitarian operation are an almost daily occurrence.

The AU peacekeepers, who struggle with a lack of equipment, experience and funds, have also come under attack, with at least 20 killed since the mission began in 2004.

On Wednesday, they were attacked again.

"(AU) personnel...were robbed by two men armed with AK47 rifles," AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.

"Two military observers were stabbed as they resisted handing over car keys," he added. The soldiers required stitches for their injuries.

"We express our condemnation of this armed robbery and we are sending a team to investigate the incident," Mezni said.

Darfur: Working together to Save Darfur

An op-ed by Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams in The Christian Science Monitor

Earlier this month, we participated in a discussion on Darfur in the European Parliament, having been invited to offer suggestions of concrete actions that the European Council and European Union could take to alleviate the misery endured by the people of Darfur. We very much appreciated the passionate concern expressed in the room and believe that that passion can and must result in stronger action to end the conflict. We hope the discussion and thoughtful suggestions by many there will influence the EU to take decisive action to protect Darfurians and bring the government in Khartoum back to the negotiating table.

Along with many parliamentarians, we are dismayed that despite much rhetorical concern in many world capitals, little has been done to end the conflict, now in its fifth year. Hundreds of thousands are dead, hundreds of thousands are in refugee camps in Chad, and millions are displaced inside Darfur. Rape, endured by countless thousands of women, continues to be used as a weapon of war. Thousands of villages have been razed, crops and livestock have been stolen or destroyed, and water has been polluted in a scorched-earth policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Khartoum and its allied janjaweed militia. Splintered and splintering rebel groups are no saints either when it comes to human rights, but the overwhelming responsibility for the war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur rests with the government.

While our suggestions were made to the EU, other governments and international bodies must come together in coordinated action to stop the carnage. Sudan should be treated like apartheid South Africa and be isolated politically and economically. Those clinging to power in Khartoum must feel real consequences for what they are doing to Darfur. Every time Khartoum hears hollow threats, its belief in its impunity is bolstered. It is time to stop accepting Sudan's promises and excuses and hold that government accountable for its actions and its inaction.

Khartoum's counterinsurgency war rages on, and the entire region is increasingly drawn into the conflict. No one believes that a military solution is possible; renewed negotiations that meet the needs and aspirations of all Darfurians are the only answer. It is time for the international community to try a carrot-and-stick approach to resolve the crisis. Some of us believe that there has been too much carrot and not nearly enough stick.

It is time to make demands of Khartoum with deadlines for action; officials must suffer meaningful consequences if they do not respond. Cease-fire and humanitarian-access agreements made in 2004 must be honored. United Nations forces must be allowed unimpeded access to the region. Khartoum must fulfill its obligation to disarm its janjaweed militia, including those who have merely changed uniform to become part of its "border intelligence," "defense forces," or "police."

Khartoum's window of opportunity to respond must be weeks, not months. Any further stonewalling must result in targeted sanctions, politically and economically isolating those in power. Governments, corporations, and others investing in businesses in the Sudan should also divest their holdings.

Until the UN "hybrid force" is fully deployed, it is imperative that African Union forces be given the equipment and other resources they need to carry out their mission. And their mandate should clearly include the ability to defend Darfurian civilians. They accepted a thankless mission with insufficient support, and it is the people of Darfur who are suffering for it.

The international community, including civil society, must increase pressure on China to take forceful action to bring Khartoum back to the negotiating table – or risk the further tarnishing of the upcoming Beijing Olympics. China has demonstrated that it can be sensible on climate change; it must show real leadership when it comes to Khartoum and Darfur.

There will be no peace in Darfur until Khartoum opens the Darfur Peace Agree­ment to new negotiations. There will be no peace until fractured rebels unite around a common position. Negotiations must include representatives of the people of Darfur – especially women, who suffer the most in war and gain the least in "peace." There will be no peace in Darfur until the historic marginalization of its people ends and they receive their share of political representation and economic resources. There will be no peace until victims of the counterinsurgency are com­pensated – particularly the women of Darfur.

We heard European parliamentarians express their frustration that dozens of statements of concern expressed in the EU and European Council have not been followed by meaningful action. The EU can and must play a leadership role in bringing this war to an end. Despite our collective outrage, frustration, and sometimes despair, we cannot give up on Darfur. Its people are counting on all of us.

Darfur: The Forgotten Rebel

An op-ed by Ronan Farrow in The Wall Street Journal

In a bare hospital room to the east of Darfur, Suleiman Jamous is living out a nightmare. He is permitted no contact with the outside world. An armed guard is posted outside his door. Were he to attempt to leave, the Sudanese government's intelligence service -- notorious for its use of torture and indefinite imprisonment -- would arrest him. Next week, he will have been incarcerated for a full year.

His crimes: extending the reach of life-saving humanitarian measures to tens of thousands of displaced people, attempting to unify volatile rebel groups, and courageously fighting against human-rights abuses. Suleiman Jamous has been described as the Nelson Mandela of Sudan, and he is one of the few heroes to emerge from the brutal conflict that has ravaged Darfur for the past four years.

Mr. Jamous, humanitarian coordinator for Darfur's largest rebel group, has been instrumental in providing aid workers with safe access to areas behind rebel lines. He is widely viewed as a key leader of the rebel opposition to Khartoum's ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur. An elderly statesman who has never picked up a gun, Mr. Jamous commands universal respect among the otherwise fractious rebel leaders who control most of rural Darfur.

Because of this, the government of Sudan has aggressively sought to suppress Mr. Jamous. He has been arrested and imprisoned repeatedly, culminating in his current detainment. Although he is now being held at a United Nations hospital, the U.N.'s hands are tied. The last time they attempted to move him, the Khartoum regime retaliated by suspending U.N. humanitarian operations in Sudan.

Mr. Jamous's absence has been felt acutely. In the 11 months since he was neutralized, humanitarian access has dwindled to its lowest level ever. More than one million Darfuris are now out of reach of aid workers. "There is no doubt that Suleiman Jamous was very important to humanitarian agencies," said the head of a prominent relief organization, who asked that he not be named. He described Mr. Jamous as a champion of "humanitarian principles and human rights," crediting him with securing desperately needed access for aid workers and negotiating the release of numerous child soldiers. "There is no doubt that not having him in Darfur has made access negotiations less certain and more complicated."

Faltering efforts to create unity and peace between rebel movements have also been undermined. Many commanders believe that such efforts will fail without Mr. Jamous's leadership. If Darfur's divided rebels fall into infighting, embattled humanitarians and defenseless civilians will be caught in the crossfire.

Despite his crucial humanitarian and peacemaking role -- and despite the fact that the government of Sudan agreed to release all prisoners of war under 2005's Darfur Peace Agreement -- Mr. Jamous remains detained. The U.N., the U.S. and the African Union appear to have abandoned him. Even the humanitarian groups whose work he facilitated have fallen silent, in well-founded fear of retaliation from the government of Sudan should they advocate for his release.

And time may be running out. For several months, Mr. Jamous has been suffering from severe abdominal pains. Doctors who examined him in December 2006 reported that he needs a stomach biopsy that cannot be performed where he is being held. Khartoum is well aware of both the urgency of his condition and the fact that freeing him could substantially improve the delivery of relief to Darfuri civilians. Still, his release is being denied.

If they are committed to achieving peace in Darfur, the powerful nations of the world and the U.N. itself must bring pressure to bear on Khartoum regarding Suleiman Jamous. The U.S. should charge its Special Envoy to Sudan, Andrew Natsios, with negotiating for Mr. Jamous's release. And people the world over should raise their voices in opposition to his unjust detention.

Speaking on behalf of his fellow South African political prisoners, Nelson Mandela once said: "Despite the thickness of the prison walls, all of us . . . could hear your voices demanding our release very clearly. We drew inspiration from this. We thank you that you refused to forget us." Today, Suleiman Jamous is desperately in need of voices of support. Let us not allow him to be forgotten.

Darfur: Sudan May Demand Apology From US

From the Sudan Tribune

The Sudanese government today said that it may demand an apology from the US government over what it described as “undiplomatic” and “unrespectful” remarks made by a top US diplomat.

The US Assistant Secretary of State Jendai Frazer was quoted on Monday as saying that the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has made promises before with no actions.

Frazer added that sanctions will remain an option until Khartoum fulfils its obligations and facilitate the deployment if UN-AU hybrid force in Darfur.

An unidentified Sudanese government official told the daily Al-Rayaam newspaper that an evaluation of Frazer’s statements is underway and may lead to a formal protest and a demand for apology from Washington.

The Sudanese envoy in Washington John Ukec blasted Frazer’s remarks and accused the US of promoting “war and instability in Sudan”. Ukec added that statements by US representative in the UN Zalmay Khalilzad in which he expressed his government’s support for a united Sudan are “nothing but a lie”.

Khartoum has recently escalated its rhetoric against Washington after the latter expressed scepticism on the latest deal signed to allow UN forces into Darfur. The US believes that given Khartoum’s history of reneging on its agreements makes it hard to take their word for granted.

The Sudanese president accused the US on Monday of being the “cause of all Sudan’s problems”. Bashir dismissed the impact of US sanctions saying that “every time they impose sanctions on us we laugh because we are not crazy; we believe that prosperity comes from god”.

A political analyst speaking to Sudan Tribune from Khartoum on condition of anonymity said that the Sudanese government was hoping for a swift lifting of sanctions by the US following its agreement to a UN-AU hybrid force. He added that statements by the US on the importance of implementing the agreement before lifting sanctions have deeply disappointed Khartoum.

U.S. President George W. Bush imposed new unilateral sanctions on Sudan during late May and sought support for an international arms embargo out of frustration at Sudan’s refusal to end what he called genocide in war-ravaged Darfur. Bush announced new sanctions that would bar 31 companies controlled by Sudan from doing business in the U.S. financial system.

Sudanese officials have constantly downplayed the impact of the recent US sanctions imposed on their economy.

However the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner who visited Khartoum earlier this month said that the Sudanese president raised the issue of US sanctions during their closed meeting. Kouchner said that the Sudanese "seem clearly affected by this issue, considering how much they raised it."

DRC: A Student, a Teacher and a Glimpse of War

The latest from Nick Kristof

I’m taking a student, Leana Wen, and a teacher, Will Okun, along with me on this trip to Africa. Here in this thatch-roofed village in the hills of eastern Congo, we had a glimpse of war, and Leana suddenly found herself called to perform.

Villagers took what looked like a bundle of rags out of one thatch-roof hut and laid it on the ground. Only it wasn’t a bunch of rags; it was a woman dying of starvation.

The woman, Yohanita Nyiahabimama, 41, weighed perhaps 60 pounds. She was conscious and stared at us with bright eyes, whispering answers to a few questions. When she was moved, she screamed in pain, for her buttocks were covered with ulcerating bedsores.

Leana, who had just graduated from medical school at Washington University, quickly examined Yohanita.

“If we don’t get her to a hospital very soon, she will die,” Leana said bluntly. “We have to get her to a hospital.”

There was nothing special about Yohanita except that she was in front of us. In villages throughout the region, people just like her are dying by the thousands — of a deadly mixture of war and poverty.

Instead of spending a few hundred dollars trying to save Yohanita, who might die anyway, we could spend that money buying vaccines or mosquito nets to save a far larger number of children in other villages.

And yet — how can you walk away from a human being who will surely die if you do so?

So we spoke to Simona Pari of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has built a school in the village and helped people here survive as conflict has raged around them. Simona immediately agreed to use her vehicle to transport Yohanita to a hospital.

The village found a teenage girl who could go with Yohanita and help look after her, and the family agreed that it would be best to have her taken not to the local public hospital but to the fine hospital in Goma run by Heal Africa, an outstanding aid group with strong American connections (www.healafrica.org).

Now, nearly four days later, Yohanita is on the road to recovery, lying on a clean bed in the Heal Africa Hospital. Leana saved one of her first patients.

What almost killed Yohanita was starvation in a narrow sense, but more broadly she is one more victim of the warfare that has already claimed four million lives in Congo since 1998. Even 21st-century wars like Congo’s — the most lethal conflict since World War II — kill the old-fashioned way, by starving people or exposing them to disease.

That’s what makes wars in the developing world so deadly, for they kill not only with guns and machetes but also in much greater numbers with diarrhea, malaria, AIDS and malnutrition.

The people here in Malehe were driven out of their village by rampaging soldiers in December. Yohanita’s family returned to their home a few months later, but their crops and livestock had been taken. Then Yohanita had a miscarriage and the family spent all its money saving her — which meant that they ran out of food.

“We used to have plenty to eat, but now we have nothing,” Yohanita’s mother, Anastasie, told us. “We’ve had nothing to eat but bananas since the beginning of May.” (To see video of our visit and read blogs by Leana and Will, go to nytimes.com/twofortheroad.)

I’m under no delusion that our intervention makes a difference to Congo (though it did make quite a difference to Yohanita). The way to help Congo isn’t to take individual starving people to the hospital but to work to end the war — yet instead the war is heating up again here, in part because Congo is off the world’s radar.

One measure of the international indifference is the shortage of aid groups here: Neighboring Rwanda, which is booming economically, is full of aid workers. But this area of eastern Congo is far needier and yet is home to hardly any aid groups. World Vision is one of the very few American groups active here in the North Kivu area.

Just imagine that four million Americans or Europeans had been killed in a war, and that white families were starving to death as a result of that war. The victims in isolated villages here in Congo, like Yohanita, may be black and poor and anonymous, but that should make this war in Congo no less an international priority.

Uganda: Leave Us In Peace, Maridi Residents Tell LRA

From IRIN

Elizabeth Madia sits quiety, lost in the memories of the day last year when Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels attacked her village of Mboroko, a few kilometres outside Maridi town in Southern Sudan's Western Equatoria region.

"It was 9am when they came and attacked our home," the mother of 10 explained. "They began beating me; I cried out loud and ran away from the homestead."

When the children heard Madia crying, they ran after her to hide in the bush. "We were far inside the bush [when] we heard gunshots," she added. "When we returned, we found the body of my husband lying in the garden."

The day that changed her life for ever was 22 November 2006.

After burying her husband, Madia left Mboroko to live with her elder son, Salah, in Maridi. "Now I do not even have enough strength to work," she explained. "I am so depressed and afraid of more attacks, that is why we left and came here. I am not going there again," she added.

The presence of the LRA in Maridi area has led to displacement and killings, adding to the burden on local families.

"I am the first-born of my family so I have a lot of responsibilities," Salah Madia, a former soldier in the Sudan People's Liberation Army, said.

Madia, who quit his job to take care of his mother and siblings, says: "We are very angry about what happened. We are supposed to enjoy peace in Sudan [but] I do not know why our father was killed like that.

"We have just finished fighting with [government troops] and now there is another war going on here, which is killing even elderly people. It is really bad," he added.

Local residents of Mboroko said the LRA recently killed eight people and abducted four girls, fuelling their bitterness towards the rebels.

DRC: UN Mission Urges Political Solution

From Reuters

U.N. Security Council ambassadors called on Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday to work with neighbouring Rwanda to find a political solution to violence in its eastern border region.

Fighting between Tutsi-dominated Congolese army brigades and Rwandan Hutu rebels has led to targeted killing of civilians, rape, and the displacement of more than 120,000 people in Congo's troubled eastern Kivu provinces since January.

"It seems to us that the problems in the east must be solved in depth, and, in this respect, the relationship with Rwanda is essential," France's ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, told reporters at the end of a visit to Congo.

"The solution cannot be solely military ... We think, in order to solve these problems so that the civilian population isn't victim of the situation in the Kivus, a global strategy using political actions and diplomatic actions is needed."

De la Sabliere was speaking at the end of a five-country tour of Africa by U.N. Security Council ambassadors.

The central African nation held its first democratic elections in more than four decades last year, won by incumbent Joseph Kabila, but violence has continued in the east.

North and South Kivu have long been flashpoints of instability in the volatile region, harbouring foreign rebel groups from neighbouring Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda as well as homegrown fighters.

The provinces were the launching point for two separate Rwandan-backed Congolese rebellions in 1996 and 1998, the latter of which triggered a six-year war which killed an estimated 4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease.

Fighters from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan rebel group partly composed of Hutus responsible for the killing of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, have lived in eastern Congo since the genocide.

Soldiers loyal to renegade Congolese General Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi brought back into Congo's army, have vowed to drive out or destroy them.

The Security Council last month renewed the mandate of the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission until Dec. 31.

East Africa: Human Trafficking 'On the Rise'

From IRIN

Human trafficking is on the rise in eastern Africa and officials attending a meeting aimed at raising awareness of the problem called for concerted efforts by governments to curb it.

"In the east African region, the statistical information is being gathered, but the crime is on the increase," Jeffrey Avina, director for operations at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told the first regional anti-human trafficking conference in eastern Africa, under way in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, until 22 June.

"It is our intention to take action and enforce the laws but we need alliances. There is a need for greater coordination, cooperation and awareness in the region," Avina added.

Conflict in northern Uganda, where rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army have been widely accused of abducting thousands of children during the past two decades, made the country stand out as the state worst affected by trafficking in eastern Africa.

"Between 25,000 and 30,000 children have been recruited into the rebel ranks and have ended up in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Matia Kasaija, Uganda's assistant minister for the interior.

According to UNODC, most victims of human trafficking are women and young girls, many of whom are forced into prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation. Trafficked men end up working in commercial farms, mines and quarries, or in other dirty and dangerous working conditions. Boys and girls are trafficked into conditions of child labour, within a diverse group of industries, such as textiles, fishing or agriculture.

"This is not about individuals; we are talking about organised crime," said Avina. "On a global scale, we are talking of an industry which earns US$32 billion per year. This is serious business. About 2.7 million people are trafficked at any one point every year in 127 countries," he added.

Darfur: UN Rights Council Extends Mission by Six Months

From AFP

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday decided to extend the work of its experts present in the strife-torn Sudanese western region of Darfur for a further six months.

The decision was adopted by consensus and under its terms the experts will submit an update to the council in September, and a final report to the following session.

In a report to the council last week, the seven experts highlighted "the seriousness of ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur as well as the lack of accountability of perpetrators of such crimes."

They urged the council to adopt more than 30 detailed "recommendations" or targets that Sudan should meet -- including clear orders to stop attacks on civilians, disarming militia and full cooperation with the International Criminal Court -- in the short term (three months) and the mid term.

They also included indicators -- such as the numbers of attacks in Darfur or the number of people handed over to the ICC -- that would allow an assessment of progress, and a list of practical assistance or equipment Khartoum would need to carry out the recommendations.

The group led by Simi Samar, the UN special rapporteur on Sudan, was set up by the 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.

Williams and her team concluded that Sudan's government had "orchestrated and participated in" war crimes and human rights abuses such as rape and torture across the region.

Darfur: The UN's Bloody Failure

A posting by Eric Reeves on Comment is Free

The failures of the UN secretariat in responding to the Darfur catastrophe are among the many signs that the international body remains incapable of responding to crises that entail confronting sovereign nations engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

To be sure there was much unctuous talk by the former secretary general, Kofi Annan, about the "responsibility to protect" civilians endangered in precisely the ways that have long been so evident in Darfur and eastern Chad. But in the end, Annan left office with a savage genocide by attrition continuing, with no end in sight, almost four years after large scale conflict began in February 2003.

Humanitarians are still being harassed, impeded and assaulted; the number of conflict-affected civilians has grown to 4.7 million, according to the latest UN figures; and hundreds of thousands have died, with the potential for cataclysmic human destruction looming ever closer.

It was a grim irony that during Annan's tenure the UN World Summit of September 2005 enshrined, in an "outcome document," the "responsibility to protect," as did security council resolution 1674 (April 2006). While Annan often invoked such "responsibility," it never really moved beyond exhortation. The current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, also made the obligatory noises last October: "I will work diligently to materialise our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable members of humanity."

But such talk has been conspicuously absent in Ban's language about Darfur since a bracing encounter with Khartoum's strongman, Omar al-Bashir, this past January in Addis Ababa. Just prior to the meeting, Ban insisted on the urgency of a protection force to Darfur: "No more time can be lost. The people of Darfur have waited far too long. This is just unacceptable." But afterwards, waiting seemed a much better idea: "We need to be patient in following up this political process as well as the peacekeeping process."

Five months later, and almost 10 months after UN security council resolution 1706 authorised "rapid" deployment of a force of 22,500 civilian police and troops with a robust mandate to protect civilians and humanitarians in Darfur, a mere 200 UN technical personnel have been deployed as sole international support for a crumbling and badly demoralised African Union force. The force, authorised by resolution 1706, under chapter seven of the UN charter, built upon recommendations contained in an assessment that Annan had requested of the UN's department of peacekeeping operations. It now exists only as a notional "hybridisation" of UN and African Union forces - an unprecedented and dubious collaboration.

And still the genocide continues, if with more chaotic violence and a fracturing of the rebel movement. Khartoum remains obdurate in its defiance of the international community, and the UN in particular. For this regime of genocidaires, the "responsibility to protect" means little more than protecting its own officials from being extradited to The Hague for trial by the international criminal court.

In short, there is a highly embarrassing disconnect between the rhetoric of the UN secretariat, including the secretary general's various special envoys for Sudan, and the poverty of achievement in protecting millions of vulnerable Darfuris and acutely endangered humanitarian operations.

This disconnect goes a long way to explain a truly preposterous opinion essay by Ban Ki-moon this past weekend in The Washington Post, suggesting that the real explanation for the Darfur crisis lies in global warming.

Though no scientist, I'm more than convinced that the evidence accumulated to date overwhelmingly supports dismaying predictions about future climate change. I'm also inclined to believe that desertification in the Sahel region of Africa is related to global
warming, and that the relentless spread of the Sahara southwards may be one of our earliest signals of ominous change. And certainly the deterioration of land quality in Darfur, mainly in north Darfur, has been a factor in exacerbating tensions between sedentary agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists. The former tend to be non-Arab or African tribal groups; the latter, Arab tribal groups, although the non-Arab Zaghawa, a key element in the rebel group, are well known as camel herders.

But the real explanation to genocide in Darfur lies not in the climate but in the ruthless arrogation of national power and wealth by the brutal regime that rules in Khartoum. Since coming to power by military coup in 1989, deposing an elected government and deliberately aborting Sudan's most promising chance for a north-south peace since independence in 1956, the National Islamic Front (which has innocuously renamed itself the National Congress party) has engaged in a vast campaign of ethnically-targeted human violence and destruction throughout Africa's largest nation: in the Nuba mountains, in southern Sudan, in the southern Blue Nile, in the eastern provinces (particularly among the Beja), and most conspicuously in Darfur.

Long before the outbreak of hostilities in February 2003, Khartoum had been arming Arab militia forces throughout Darfur, even while it was forcibly disarming African villages. Desperate for broader political support, Khartoum also divided Darfur into three states in 1994 as a means of denying the non-Arab Fur, the largest ethnic group in Darfur, a political majority in any part of Darfur. Walis (governors) were handpicked by the NIF leadership, and the ruthlessly efficient security services soon supplanted the decayed justice system in Darfur.

The relationship between Arab nomads and sedentary agriculturalists was never the untroubled symbiosis that Ban Ki-moon fatuously suggests in his essay. But there were certainly traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution and compensation. These could not survive, however, as Khartoum sided ever more conspicuously with the most violent elements within the Arab militias - what would become the infamous Janjaweed.

An intensification of ethnic conflict in Darfur indeed began in the wake of the famine of 1984-85. But it was not until the 1990s that ethnicity became the defining feature of conflict. Particularly with the brutal assaults on the Massaleit people in the late 1990s, the potential for genocidal destruction was clear.

Decades of severe political and economic marginalisation, along with the NIF regime's politically expedient targeting of the African tribal groups of Darfur, are the real cause of conflict in Darfur.

This is well established political history, all neatly excluded from Ban Ki-moon's convenient and self-exculpatory meteorological history of Darfur. But we will make no progress in either understanding or halting the ongoing, indeed spreading, human destruction in Darfur and eastern Chad unless we look not merely to the skies but to the heart of darkness that beats relentlessly in Khartoum.

Darfur: Sudan Denies Acceptance of UN Command Over Hybrid Force

From the Sudan Tribune

Sudan denied reports that it has agreed to UN command of the proposed hybrid forces in Darfur. Sudan’s foreign minister Lam Akol said that statements by South Africa UN envoy in that regard were not accurate.

A Security Council delegation visited Khartoum last week and raised the issue of command and control with Sudanese officials. South African ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said that Sudan has agreed that the force will be under UN command and control, a prerequisite for funding by the world body.

Akol said that the operations on the ground will be run by the African Union (AU) with the assistance of the UN in command and control structures. He added that there has been no change in Khartoum’s position on that since the Addis Ababa communiqué that set the framework for the UN-AU hybrid force.

Sudan’s position with regard to command of hybrid forces was echoed by Sudan’s UN envoy Abdalhaleem Abdalmahmood who stressed that the peacekeeping forces will be led by the AU. Abdalmahmood noted that it is still too early to talk about deployment of forces given that there are some technical details that have yet to be resolved with the UN on the hybrid force.

Earlier today the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was quoted as saying that the forces “will be commanded by the AU and its troops would mainly come from African countries”. He added that “only technical and civilian personnel could be sent by non-African countries to join the peacekeeping force”.

The recent statements by Sudanese officials cast new doubts on the commitment of Khartoum to the agreement on the hybrid force. Khartoum has a history of backtracking on its agreement as it did after initially accepting the full U.N. deployment in Addis Ababa last year.

Darfur: Crisis Sparks Louder Calls For 2008 Olympics Boycott

From VOA - via POTP

As the humanitarian crisis in Darfur continues, calls in the United States and Europe for an international boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics because of China’s support of Sudan are intensifying. Human rights activists say the Sudanese government is using a militia, the janjaweed, to “exterminate” the black people of Darfur. They claim that 400, 000 people have lost their lives and more than two million have fled to refugee camps as a result of the violence. The activists say China bears responsibility for the tragedy, given its military and economic support of the Sudanese administration. In the first part of a series on the growing calls for a worldwide boycott of the Chinese Olympics, VOA’s Darren Taylor reports on the reasons behind the targeting of Beijing because of the Darfur conflict.

United States officials, including President George W. Bush, have branded the Darfur situation “genocide” – a characterization that rankles with Khartoum, which claims that only a few thousand people have lost their lives in the region as a result of “tribal disputes” and “rebel attacks.”

According to Salah Elguneid, Sudan’s Deputy Ambassador to the US, the “sudden cries” for action to be taken against China because of Darfur, are happening for the “simple reason” that the word “genocide” is being used to describe what is essentially a “tribal conflict over scarce resources.”

“Through this false description of what is happening in Darfur, irresponsible people are sweeping up feelings and as a result China, Sudan’s close ally, is now also in the middle of the storm,” Salah explains.

As the violence has continued in Darfur, with accompanying images of death and destruction, a powerful, vocal and well-funded advocacy campaign with thousands of members has risen to the fore in America, with off-shoots throughout Europe and stronger efforts to involve activists in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

Sudan has repeatedly balked at allowing a significant force of United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, despite making numerous agreements that it would do so. Khartoum has agreed to a force of between 20,000 and 25, 000 multinational soldiers for Darfur to protect civilians, and also appears to have agreed that the troops be under UN command. The government of Sudan had previously insisted that the proposed peacekeeping force – agreed to in terms of a special UN resolution – be made up mainly of African Union troops, that it should function under AU command, and that the UN troops should serve mostly in a logistical capacity and not as “active” peacekeepers.

An AU contingent of about 7,000 soldiers in Darfur has been unable to secure peace in the region – largely because the force is overstretched and under-resourced. But Khartoum’s agreement that the peacekeepers be controlled by the UN has opened the way for the troops to be better funded by the international body.

But activists remain skeptical, given Khartoum’s tendency to make agreements – only to fail to implement them.

“Unless we see real, on-the-ground movement to significantly protect the people of Darfur, I’m sure calls like the one for a boycott of next year’s Olympics in China will get louder in the months ahead,” says Anita Sharma, of the Enough Campaign to end the “genocide” in Darfur.

Given Khartoum’s apparent intransigence with regard to ending the atrocities, activist attention has shifted to China, because of the Far Eastern power’s strong economic, military and political ties with Sudan and it’s hosting of a high profile global event next year – the Olympic Games, scheduled to begin in August 2008.

While the calls for an international boycott of the Beijing Olympics are so far only being made by a smattering of American and European politicians, the major advocacy groups around the Darfur crisis have made it clear that they support the increased pressure being brought to bear on China to act as an honest broker in helping to end what the UN has termed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

[edit[]

If positive moves to bring peace to Darfur are not witnessed within the next few months, say the activists, there’s a strong possibility that they’ll join the calls for a global boycott of the Chinese Games.

“We want action, not endless agreements,” says Sharma.

Already, activists throughout the US and Europe have termed the Beijing event the “Genocide Olympics” and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on international advertising campaigns highlighting China’s alleged fomentation of the Darfur conflagration.

In late May, the Save Darfur Coalition placed advertisements in major newspapers around the world – including in several Chinese-language newspapers in Asia, and spotlighted China’s “unique position to pressure the Sudanese government into stopping the bloodshed and allowing United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur to protect civilians.” The Save Darfur adverts underscored the fact that China is “happy” to emphasize its “beneficent role” as host of the 2008 Olympics - but not its support of a “regime engaged in genocide.”

Politicians and US celebrities, such as actress and UN goodwill ambassador, Mia Farrow, and several musicians, are stepping forward to add their voices against China. Farrow and American Sudan analyst, Eric Reeves, recently launched the ‘Dream for Darfur’ campaign. It stops short of calling for an all-out Olympics boycott - at this stage - but appeals to the international community to pressure China to act with regard to gaining a lasting harmony in Darfur.

American politicians are becoming increasingly involved in campaigns surrounding Darfur and the Chinese Olympics.

A letter signed by more than 100 US lawmakers was recently sent to China’s President Hu Jintao warning him of a public relations “disaster” should Beijing fail to use its influence over Sudan.

“It would be a disaster for China if the Games were to be marred by protests, from concerned individuals and groups, who will undoubtedly link your government to the continued atrocities in Darfur, if there is no significant improvement in the conditions,” the letter stated.

New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, who intends standing in next year’s US presidential election, says he’ll support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics - if China fails to pressure Sudan to stop the violence in Darfur. Several powerful French politicians, such as Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, and former presidential candidates, Francois Bayrou and Segolene Royale, also support such moves.

High-profile Africans are being brought into the anti-Chinese Olympics fold. They’re joining Darfuri refugees in appealing to Beijing to avoid a boycott of next year’s Games by helping to secure peace in the region. Tegla Lourope, Kenyan marathon athlete and holder of several long-distance world records, recently testified at a US Congress hearing held specifically to examine a possible boycott of the 2008 Olympics.

“We know that the Chinese are supporting the government of Sudan…. It’s time to tell the people in China during the Olympics…. That they should see that the businesses that they deal in Sudan should bring peace, not pain, in the eyes of the (Darfuri) children, in the eyes of the poor that cannot talk,” Lourope said.

In addition to her weight as an international sports celebrity, Lourope’s testimony was especially effective given the fact that she’s a survivor of conflict in Africa. Growing up in Kapenguria, a district in Kenya near the country’s border with Uganda, she witnessed killings as ethnic violence swept her village. Lourope continues to return to the area to inspect the ravages of war.

Survivors of the violence in Darfur, such as Daudi Hari, have also added their voices to those of the activists who are threatening to lead a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Hari recently told US Congress members: “To bring peace to my people and stop the genocide, I recommend that you pressure the government of China to not support the government of Sudan in killing my people.”

Tens of thousands of people around the world have already signed petitions to boycott the Games. But John Prendergast, of the International Crisis Group, says the Chinese still have time to rescue the Olympics, and he sees encouraging signs that Beijing will play a positive role in bringing peace to Darfur.

“You have the first time this regime (China) has opened itself up, because it has a vested interest in presenting a new face to the world in the context of the Olympics; it’s vulnerable to pressure and it wants to end this crisis – simply because it wants it off its back.”

Deputy ambassador Salah is irritated by all the talk of employing China to pressure his government with regard to Darfur, and dismisses the possibility of a 2008 Olympics boycott as “not helpful to anyone.”

He denies that China is putting pressure on Sudan.

“It’s not pressure; it’s friendly advice,” Salah says. “And we welcome such advice from our friends.”

China’s heightened presence in Africa, and its favorable relations with governments considered to be abusers of human rights – such as Zimbabwe and Sudan – have led to an ever-expanding focus, especially in the US and Europe, on Beijing.

“China is the most conspicuous…. partner that Khartoum has. It’s a forty percent shareholder in (Sudan’s) oil sector; it purchases the majority of the oil that’s exported from Sudan,” says Stephen Morrison, the head of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

“It has major economic investments (in Sudan); it has used its position in the Security Council to block sanctions and other measures that would raise the pressure on Khartoum. It has a strong security position (in Sudan) in terms of weapons sales and the like. It’s for these reasons that China is given special attention by the advocacy community.”

But Morrison says he sometimes questions why China is being singled out – to the exclusion of other powers who could also potentially contribute towards peace efforts in Darfur. He points out that Russia, too, has a “very significant security relationship” with Khartoum, and that Russia, too, has used its position on the UN Security Council to veto action against Sudan.

“India and Malaysia are two other major partners in (Sudan’s) oil sector. But none of those have come under the same level of opprobrium as China has,” Morrison says.

The perception that China is the only realistic option to be used to force Khartoum’s hand is, indeed, fixed in the minds of many in the Darfur activist community.

Sharma says: “The leverage that China plays right now vis a vis the other countries in getting Sudan to change its calculations is just enormous and second to none. And I think that’s why you’ve seen so much pressure, both within the halls of Congress and within activist communities and now increasingly on the international stage as well – particularly with the French government – to really work with China and to urge China to really use that leverage to change the calculations with the government of Khartoum.”

It is, after all, China that is hosting the next Olympic Games, says Sharma - not any other country…. And that ensures that Beijing is a more attractive target than others with interests in Sudan.

“The 2008 Beijing Olympics…. is something that matters enormously to China and its image and what it sees as its emergence as an ethical global power. And that also accords (the Chinese) a certain vulnerability, a certain conspicuousness, that advocacy groups are going to be drawn towards,” Morrison acknowledges.

Sharma says groups such as hers will increasingly “use the Olympics” to “make China aware” of its “responsibility” to “encourage” the government of Khartoum to stop the violence in Darfur, before they call for an “outright boycott” of the Chinese Games.

“The people who are actually calling for a wholesale boycott right now are very much still the fringe elements – I think there’s more that can still be done rather than call for a wholesale boycott of the Olympics,” says Sharma.

She says advocacy groups such as hers have so far resisted appealing for a global boycott of the Beijing Games because they’re encouraged by “increasing evidence that the Chinese government is aware of the activist pressure in the United States against China; (and) the calls within Congress to urge China to stop the genocide in Darfur.”

The Save Darfur Coalition’s senior international coordinator, former US ambassador Larry Rossin, agrees that the calls to boycott the 2008 Games are premature.

“A boycott is an unpopular step, first of all. There’ve been Olympic boycotts in the past, and they’ve not been effective. But also the goal here is not to damage the Olympics; the goal here is to persuade China to use its great influence in Sudan in a much more direct and positive way than the tentative steps it may have been taking up until now.”

Rossin is at pains to explain that the activists do not want to spoil next year’s Olympics – which are, he stresses, an international, and not solely a Chinese, event.

“We think that the Olympics are a good thing. We just want the Olympics to be ‘One World, One Dream’, for everybody - including the people of Darfur. So we believe that supporting a good Olympics is the right approach, not calling on people to boycott the Olympics at this stage.”

Darfur: Oxfam Workers Hijacked

From AFP

Three staff working for the British aid agency Oxfam have been wounded by armed men in eastern Chad who stole their vehicle and abandoned them, the organisation said on Tuesday.

"Three health engineers and two local drivers were (on Monday) travelling in two cars, in convoy with a third from another international humanitarian organisation, when they were held up at gunpoint on the road from Abeche to Guereda in Eastern Chad," Oxfam said.

"All three international staff - a Frenchman and Ugandan based in the UK and an Indian national - were injured by the gunmen before they were abandoned in the bush."

It gave no details as to the fate of the occupants of the third vehicle. The group managed to reach Abeche and the vehicles were recovered with help from the Chadian authorities.

No indication was given as to the identity of the attackers, but several humanitarian sources said the area was under the full control of the Chadian army.

"Yesterday afternoon's incident is a regular crime which is undermining the humanitarian work in the region," Oxfam said.

"This is the third car-jacking Oxfam has experienced in less than a year. In the last two years around 70 vehicles belonging to humanitarian organisations have been lost to gunmen."

Darfur: Continuing Violence Claims NGO Employee

From IRIN

The killing of an employee of the NGO Action by Churches Together-Caritas (ACT-Caritas) in West Darfur has brought to five the number of people recently killed in Zalingei area, amid continuing violence that is hampering aid work across the western Sudanese region.

"This killing follows a spate of attacks in the camps around Zalingei," the charity said in a statement on 19 June. "Since the beginning of June, five camp residents have been shot and killed, huts have been set on fire, people have been beaten, and women assaulted almost daily. Hijackings of vehicles belonging to the UN and other international organisations also continue."

Adam Adam, a guard and pump operator at a water point in Khamsa Degaig camp for internally displaced persons in Zalingei, was shot on 17 June. He was one of the local leaders in the camp.

"The incident was witnessed by three women on their way to the water point," ACT-Caritas noted. "People in the camp tried to react, but the attackers fired shots into the crowd, dispersing them and allowing the gunmen to escape."

According to the NGO, security in and around Zalingei, where about 100,000 people are camped, has continued to deteriorate over the past year yet people keep arriving every day.

This latest incident comes just days after Sudanese authorities accepted the proposed deployment of a hybrid UN/African Union force to stabilise the strife-torn Darfur region.

However, Amnesty International, in a statement issued on 19 June, said much more needed to be done to ensure civilians are protected against human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by belligerents fighting in Darfur.

The incident also follows an announcement by Oxfam on 17 June that it would permanently close its humanitarian operation in Gereida, South Darfur, due to reluctance by authorities there to improve security and stop attacks on aid workers.

Oxfam had in December 2006 suspended its operations in Gereida - where 130,000 internally displaced people are sheltered in camps after fleeing from violence - after an attack by an armed group on the compounds of Oxfam and the charity Action Against Hunger.

Darfur: Sudan President Scoffs at Sanctions

From AFP

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said on Tuesday he was not concerned by the prospect of more US sanctions, saying existing ones had helped his country to stand on its own two feet.

"Let the new madmen or the new conservatives pick whatever they want as sanctions, we will bow only before God," Beshir said in a speech at the Giad group’s industrial site, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Khartoum.

He was speaking a day after the top US diplomat for Africa said the threat of more sanctions against Sudan would only be lifted when Khartoum makes good on its pledge to allow United Nations peacekeepers into the war-torn western region of Darfur.

Previous promises from Beshir had come to nothing and only actions, not words, would suffice, said Assistant Secretary of State Jendai Frazer after a UN Security Council delegation said it had secured agreement from Sudan’s government for a strengthened peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur.

"The US threat of sanctions is not based on promises from President Beshir but on action," she told reporters in Pretoria. "Until there is action in respect of Darfur, further sanctions remain an option.

In his speech, Beshir said that "sanctions and attempts at embargo have only been positive for Sudan."

Referring to the withdrawal of foreign oil companies from the country 20 years ago during the war with rebels in the south, he said: "That allowed us to turn to the East (Asia), and the East has never let us down."

He also referred to armaments, saying the refusal of Western countries to supply the Sudanese armed forces had allowed his country to develop its own industry.

"The Yarmuk complex satisfies all our conventional arms needs, and we produce our own munitions, from the simple bullet to rockets."

The president said the next challenge for Sudan will be to develop integrated industries and an agricultural sector that is competitive in world markets.

Darfur: Sudan Bowed to Pressure

From Reuters

International pressure forced Sudan to accept a plan to deploy a combined U.N. and AU peacekeeping force of at least 20,000 troops in its troubled Darfur region, opposition parties said on Tuesday.

Khartoum's approval of the joint force came days after the United States strengthened sanctions against Sudan and after threats that a U.S. and British draft resolution would be tabled to impose U.N. sanctions on the African nation.

It also preceded a U.N. Security Council visit to Sudan.

Sudan's government says it did not bow to pressure, but arrived at a compromise through negotiations with the world body and the AU.

But Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the opposition Popular Congress party, said it was clear the threats had worked.

"Of course the government had said absolutely no. But now under pressure they surrendered," Turabi told Reuters.

"They said OK, without conditions we surrender."

The spokeswoman of the other main opposition party in Khartoum, the Umma Party, said the move to accept the force of between 20,000-25,000 troops and police did not stem from the government's desire to protect Darfuri civilians.

"They did not give in for the well-being of the Sudanese people. They gave in under pressure," Mariam al-Mahdi said.

Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry said the threat of sanctions was a useful tool.

"I would say that the suggestion of sanctions can themselves be just as effective as sanctions actually in place," Parry told reporters during a visit to Khartoum.

Both opposition parties, the most active in Khartoum, welcomed the government's change in position, but said only a real political solution would end the crisis which has driven 2.5 million people from their homes, sparking the world's largest humanitarian operation.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in four years of violence, which Washington calls genocide. Khartoum rejects the term and puts the death toll at 9,000.

An AU mission was sent to the region but has proven ineffective. Khartoum strongly rejected Security Council Resolution 1706 authorising a U.N. force to take over, calling it an attempt to colonize Sudan.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last year said he would resign and lead armed resistance to any U.N. troops in Darfur. But Foreign Minister Lam Akol said he was quoted out of context.

"He was talking about U.N. troops under U.N. command as under Resolution 1706," he told Reuters.

The hybrid force has an African commander supported by U.N. command and control structures. Most forces will come from Africa but non-Africans would make up the shortfall.

The rebels have split into more than a dozen groups since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions.

Many leaders have since lost control of their commanders on the ground, creating a chaotic and dangerous environment for aid workers and peacekeepers.

Turabi blamed Khartoum, saying it had pursued a deliberate policy of fragmenting the rebel groups to weaken them.

"Everybody wants to divide their enemies," he said.

Mahdi said she was not optimistic about planned U.N.-AU mediated peace talks.

"The conflict in Darfur has gotten complicated in an unprecedented way," she said.

Darfur: China Puts Private Pessure on Sudan

From the Financial Times

China's special envoy to Sudan has indicated that Beijing has privately exerted pressure on Khartoum over the conflict in Darfur, sometimes using "very direct language".

His comments in an interview with the Financial Times come amid western speculation that China is growing concerned at the potential threat the crisis poses to its commercial interests in Sudan and to the success of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Liu Guijin, a senior Chinese diplomat, was named special representative for Darfur in April, in the wake of growing criticism in the west of China's perceived reluctance - as Sudan's leading trading partner and top consumer of Sudanese oil - to put pressure on Khartoum to halt the violence in Darfur.

Speaking after a fact-finding mission to Sudan, Mr Liu stopped short of criticising Khartoum and argued that to impose further sanctions, as some in the west are proposing, would be counter-productive.

But he did suggest China had been more forceful in private. "In our own way and through various means and various channels we have tried to advise the Sudanese government to be more flexible," he said.

"Even on certain issues like [whether] to accept the Annan plan [for a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force] we use very direct language to persuade them to understand they have to be very flexible."

At the weekend UN officials said President Omar al-Bashir had agreed to the deployment of the hybrid force. Mr Liu's comments chime with the impression of western officials that Beijing has become more active in seeking solutions to the conflict, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives anddisplaced 2m people since 2003.

"They are concerned that Darfur should not spread out and wreck the [separate] North-South peace agreement and compromise their ability to get the oil," David Triesman, Britain's Africa minister, told the FT.

He said there was a dawning awareness in China of how damaging a campaign promoted by US celebrities threatening a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, could become. "The Chinese are beginning to understand these are very powerful forces," Lord Triesman said.

Speaking in Pretoria after meeting South African officials, Mr Liu, Beijing's former ambassador to South Africa, said China's ties with Sudan had been "unnecessarily politicised", which was "unfair and irrational".

But, when asked if China was worried the conflict might affect its oil interests, he broke with the standard stonewalling approach of Chinese officials.

"As with any investor in any country it is logical that the investor hopes to have a more stable, more peaceful situation," he said. "That is something quite natural. But currently we do not see imminent danger.

"We are pushing for the long-term solution. We are pushing for the restoration of peace and stability not selfishly only for the benefit of Chinese oil companies but for the peace of the region."

Darfur: NGO Worker Killed

From ACT-Caritas

The employee, Adam Adam, was a guard and a pump operator at a water point in Khamsa Degaig camp for internally displaced persons in Zalingei, West Darfur. The deceased was also one of the local leaders in the camp.

This killing follows a spate of attacks in the camps around Zalingei. Since the beginning of June, five camp residents have been shot and killed, huts have been set on fire, people have been beaten, and women are being assaulted almost daily. Hijackings of vehicles belonging to the UN and other international organisations also continue.

On his way home from work Sunday evening, Mr. Adam was ordered to stop by three unidentified men in civilian clothes. After refusing to stop, one of the three men shot him three times at point blank range. The guard died immediately.

The incident was witnessed by three women on their way to the water point. People in the camp tried to react, but the attackers fired shots into the crowd, dispersing them and allowing the gunmen to escape.

The security situation in and around Zalingei, where some 100,000 people have amassed in camps in search of safety and some little sustenance, has continued to deteriorate over the past year. People are still arriving in the camps every day.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of life of one of our local staff members, Mr. Adam Adam, in West Darfur. We extend our prayers, sympathy and support to his family," said John Nduna, director of the Geneva-based coordinating office of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.

Darfur: Security in Southern Town Shows No Improvement

From the UN News Center

The security situation in the southern Darfur town of Gereida has not improved and militia attacks against civilians, especially women, are continuing, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today after wrapping up a four-day visit to the town.

UNMIS conducted the visit to Gereida to follow up on the Darfur Peace Agreement’s (DPA) effect on the overall security situation, livelihoods and tribal reconciliation, according to a news bulletin issued by the Mission. Gereida is a key town about 90 kilometres south of the provincial capital, Nyala.

The UNMIS team found that Janjaweed attacks outside towns were ongoing and women were still subject to rape and harassment.

The DPA, signed in May 2006 between the Sudanese Government and part of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), was supposed to put an end to the fierce fighting in Darfur, and the agreement covers security, wealth-sharing and power-sharing.

But the Darfur conflict has raged on and some 200,000 people have now been killed since 2003 and more than 2 million others have had to flee their homes, resulting in large numbers of Sudanese refugees in neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

In a related development, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed France’s offer to airlift life-saving humanitarian assistance to a growing number of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians living in an “increasingly precarious situation.”

“With the onset of the rainy season, thousands of refugees and internally displaced people will face even greater hardship. This airlift will help avoid any critical gaps in our operation to feed thousands of people,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.

WFP aimed to pre-position a six-month supply of food to feed 240,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps and 150,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern Chad through the rainy season from June to November. So far, it has managed to build four months of food stocks.

Darfur: Australia Considers Sending Troops

From AAP

Prime Minister John Howard has told government MPs and senators that Australian troops may yet join a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Last week, Mr Howard indicated that Australia would not be sending troops due to military commitments in other parts of the world.

The United Nations has reportedly asked Australia to contribute military personnel to an international operation to help quell fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people and created 2.5 million refugees in Darfur since 2003.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson reportedly rejected the UN request.

But Mr Howard told a joint party meeting that "the government is looking at that" after a number of government backbenchers expressed the view that Australia should send peacekeepers.

Darfur: Sudan's Unconditional OK to UN

From United Press International

Over the weekend, members of the U.N. Security Council took their argument for a 23,000-member hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in embattled Darfur to Sudan's capital of Khartoum and personally delivered it to President Omar al-Bashir.

Officials said Sunday it was unconditionally endorsed and promised on return to U.N. headquarters in New York to pen a draft resolution seeking funding for what will be the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation. But the real answer from Sudan will only be known in time, because of Khartoum's waffling in the past over agreements to establish the force designed to bring peace to a region where experts say more than 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million people have been displaced since the conflict began nearly four and a half years ago.

Also over the weekend, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post in which he said the conflict may have had its beginnings, in part at least, in climate change, forces seeking water because of drought, an argument used by Khartoum in denying genocide, as alleged by the United States.

But the latest assurance from Khartoum now means the peacekeepers are set to be deployed next year because of the work that has to be done before boots hit the ground.

"I can tell you that the foreign minister told us in no uncertain terms that the government of Sudan accepted the hybrid operation without any conditionality. The president himself just confirmed the same thing to us," Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo of South Africa told reporters in Khartoum Sunday.

"The Sudanese leadership, at the level of the president of the republic, has confirmed that the State of Sudan is committed to all the agreements signed, including the recent agreement signed in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) on a hybrid operation in Darfur," Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol told reporters.

Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of Britain said the Security Council would seek financing for the force from the regular U.N. peacekeeping budget, meaning the cost would be borne by all U.N. member states.

"We all laid heavy emphasis in two long constructive meetings and over lunch" on the hybrid force with emphasis on the need "to accelerate the implementation and get that in place as soon as possible," he said.

"There isn't going to be an enduring peace unless there is a political settlement," he said.

Members of the panel of 15 called for accelerated efforts on the political front.

"The government confirmed its commitment to pursue that, and I quote the minister, 'aggressively,' meaning that the government is fully committed to it," Jones Parry said.

Sudanese officials also provided "certain assurances" on humanitarian access to those in need.

On the need for a cease-fire, the London envoy said council members had expressed concern the Khartoum government "should exercise a measure of self-restraint faced with lots of temptations given the performance of the rebels."

The rebels reportedly have split into a dozen or more factions with only a few of them signing on to a cease-fire accord. At the same time, the government is reported to have lost at least some control over the militias it called on for help against rebels.

Arab militia against black Africans was what prompted Washington's genocide charge, an accusation with which the United Nations does not agree.

Officials from the Security Council members are on a brief Africa tour, which began this weekend in Addis Ababa.

The purpose of the Khartoum visit was to reaffirm to the government the council's commitment to the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Sudan while encouraging its government and other parties to engage constructively in the Darfur peace process, Kumalo said.

In addition the aim was to "achieve without delay, full agreement" on deploying the hybrid operation. The council also "came to encourage all parties here to fully implement the cease-fire agreement," he added.

Bashir, in the past, had expressed fears of "recolonialization" by a U.N. peacekeeping force and had demanded African peacekeepers.

A poorly armed 7,000-strong AU force couldn't handle the situation, and it was agreed the United Nations would deploy and finance an AU-U.N. hybrid force. It would be African as far as possible, fleshing out the operation with troops from somewhere other than Africa when troops from African countries could not be found to deploy or specialties are needed.

Asked when the council would recommend that the General Assembly authorize funding for the hybrid force, Kumalo said this would happen "within a month."

UN: Rights Body Sets Rules on How to Move Against Abusers

From the AP

Members of the new United Nations human rights watchdog body agreed in principle Tuesday to a compromise on how to investigate some of the world's worst rights offenders, sparing it from the potentially embarrassing prospect of failing to set its own rules.

The Human Rights Council, which was formed last year to replace the UN Human Rights Commission, has faced widespread criticism from activists who say it is dominated by its large African, Arab and Asian blocs, and spends much of its time singling out Israel and fending off criticism of countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe.

The council's members had negotiated for a year on setting the ground rules for how it will operate. But just as a compromise package appeared likely to be approved at a council meeting in Geneva late Monday, the deal was held up by China's last-minute attempt to raise the threshold for any resolution criticizing a country over its human rights record.

China said approval by two-thirds of the council's 47 members should be required before a special investigation of alleged rights violations is begun. The current requirement is a simple majority.

The council president, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, said members had agreed to a new proposal that says resolutions against a country should have "the broadest possible support" - preferably from at least 15 members - before being submitted to the full council for approval.

The new proposal was to be put before the council for formal approval later Tuesday.

"We have all made compromises; it is not a perfect text. Negotiations never achieve a perfect text," de Alba said.

The agreement was received with relief by member states, who would have very likely faced more international criticism if no action had been taken.

"This is good for Geneva; it is good for multilateral negotiations," said Ambassador Blaise Godet of Switzerland, which was instrumental in setting up the Human Rights Council a year ago.

Although many developing countries object to naming and shaming countries over their human rights records, they make an exception for Israel, the only government explicitly criticized so far by the body. Censure by the council brings no sanctions beyond international scrutiny.

Among the proposed changes to its rules is the establishment of a "universal periodic review" mechanism under which all countries will have their rights records examined regularly, so as to remove any accusation of bias.

De Alba's proposal also aims to ensure that annual reports are produced on a number of specific human rights hot spots, including Haiti, Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Myanmar, North Korea and the Palestinian territories. But it would cancel longstanding mandates to investigate Cuba and Belarus.

Rwanda: Genocide Tribunal Requests Venue Transfers to Meet Deadline

From VOA

The president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is briefing the U.N. Security Council on the court's efforts to prosecute the 90 people indicted for masterminding the Rwandan genocide. Katy Migiro reports for VOA that the court hopes to transfer a number of cases to Rwandan and European courts in an effort to complete its work before its mandate expires next year.

Significant changes are taking place in the way in which the 10-year-old International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecutes those it believes are responsible for the 1994 genocide.

The court has until the end of 2008 to complete the trials of the 90 people it has indicted as the main instigators of the Rwandan genocide. Eighteen of these men are still on the run. The majority of the 72 who have been arrested are either in court or still awaiting the start of their trials.

Last week, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, Tanzania, made his first request for a case to be transferred to Rwanda for trial.

If the request is approved, the prosecutor hopes to transfer up to 16 more cases to Rwanda.

The prosecutor also hopes to transfer several cases to Europe.

[edit]

One of the major challenges facing the tribunal is what to do with indictees who are acquitted or have served their term. When it was set up, U.N. member states agreed to share the burden of hosting such people. But several men have been stuck in Tanzania for up to four years, at the tribunal's expense, waiting for another country to take them on.

Tribunal spokesperson Roland Amoussouga says the prosecutor will ask members of the U.N. Security Council to fulfill their obligations when he meets with them Monday in New York.

"Those are people who do not have any passports," he said. "They do not have ID. And some of them have families in the western countries and they all believe that they would be better off security wise in Europe or elsewhere, not in any African countries. Some of them have their wives who are citizens of a particular country, for instance in Belgium. Their kids are there."

Darfur: US Refuses to Lift Sudan Sanctions Threat

From AFP

The threat of sanctions against Sudan will only be lifted when Khartoum makes good on its pledge to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, the top US diplomat for Africa said Monday.

Previous promises from President Omar al-Beshir had come to nothing and only actions, not words, would suffice, said Assistant Secretary of State Jendai Frazer after a UN Security Council delegation said it had secured agreement from Sudan's government for a strengthened peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur.

"The US threat of sanctions is not based on promises from President Beshir but on action," she told reporters in the South African capital.

"Until there is action in respect of Darfur, further sanctions remain an option.

"There has been a pattern of him agreeing to terms and then when, he looks at conditions on the ground, backtracking."

Frazer said the UN peacekeepers, who will form part of a so-called hybrid force to bolster poorly-equipped African Union forces already on the ground, needed to be deployed sooner rather than later.

The diplomat said she had heard the troops might not be allowed into Darfur for another 14 months, which was totally unacceptable.

"I've also heard they could be there by October, which is better but still not good enough," she said.

"The peacekeepers were needed there yesterday. In fact they were needed last year.

Darfur: These Satellite Images Document an Atrocity

From the Washington Post Magazine

ON THE CORNEROF JEREMY NELSON'S L-SHAPED DESK AT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S WASHINGTON OFFICE SIT TWO 17-INCH MONITORS. Both have an extra-tall base, and even then they rest on phone books to get them close to eye level for the 6-foot-3 researcher. At 7 on a Thursday night in April, an exhausted but upbeat Nelson is staring at two satellite images of the same area in South Darfur, Sudan, one on each screen. One was taken in December 2004 and the other in February 2007. They show a region that was targeted by what Sudan's government called a "road-clearing offensive." Amnesty reports indicate that last November, while officials were engaged in peace talks in Nigeria, military ground and air forces and Janjaweed militias burned dozens of villages.

This is just one incident in a violent conflict that has killed between 200,000 and 450,000 people in the Darfur region since 2003. A major obstacle to international intervention has been the Sudanese government's refusal to acknowledge the level of violence and its own complicity. In late March, for example, Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir said in a TV interview that the U.S. State Department map showing 1,000 Darfurian villages as burned was a fabrication. The Sudanese government also holds that only 9,000 people have died in the bloodshed, and that local Janjaweed militias -- the same Janjaweed that gained notoriety for atrocities in Sudan's recent civil war -- are independent actors, despite the fact that they've been seen attacking with military support, raping women and girls, pillaging and sometimes burning entire villages to the ground. Amnesty had been documenting the violence, but last year, the government stopped letting Amnesty's researchers into the country. Then last month, Sudan cited lack of evidence in refusing to comply with the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for the minister of state for humanitarian affairs and a Janjaweed militia leader.

Which is where Nelson comes in. The 31-year-old researcher is an associate with Amnesty's Crisis Prevention and Response Center. Normally, he tracks hot spots and brewing crises, handles logistics and develops graphics for postcard and poster campaigns. Now he's also learning to analyze satellite images. The catalyst is a partnership between Amnesty and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that's pioneering a new kind of human rights observation: the use of high-resolution satellite imagery -- commercially available only since 2001 -- to document atrocities in areas made inaccessible to watchdog groups. The unusual collaboration started about a year ago, with test projects looking at Zimbabwe and Lebanon. The Darfur effort is by far their biggest yet, and the most politically significant.

Since 2004, the African Union has maintained a modest force of about 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, but their mandate expires at the end of this month. The AAAS/Amnesty group hopes that the satellite images it is collecting will provide incontrovertible proof of burning and destruction. Ideally, Sudan then will be forced to accept the United Nations peacekeeping force that the government refused to allow in last year.

"What this satellite technology does, it makes it possible to break down those walls of secrecy. Not only to get information, but to get information in a way that's irrefutable," says Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

The images on Nelson's screen were taken by QuickBird, a satellite launched in 2001 by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe, one of two U.S.-based commercial satellite companies. QuickBird's resolution is good enough to show individual houses and sometimes even cars, and it shoots in color. The other U.S. company, Dulles-based GeoEye, operates two similar satellites with slightly lower resolution. Each of the satellites orbits the planet several times a day; among the three, they reach almost any spot on Earth about once a week. It's fair to assume that government spy satellites still have the best equipment in orbit. But today, anyone with a big enough checkbook can order spy-quality images. (With some exceptions; a 1997 U.S. law prohibits the collection and release of satellite imagery of Israel with a resolution better than two meters, for example.)

Tonight, Nelson begins his work by making a copy of the shot in the right-hand screen and pasting it directly over the one on the left. Then he makes the top one nearly transparent. A river that cuts through the scene becomes a marker to help him line up the two. Now he can easily flip back and forth to look for changes.

Sudanese huts tend to follow a similar pattern: a solid base ring with a steep, thatched roof. In the earlier image, they show up as small circles, with a slight shading to the dome, depending on the direction of the sun. Nelson draws a small, green circle slightly larger than the area of the average hut and makes several dozen copies of it. Then he begins methodically placing a green circle over every hut that can be found in any of the half-dozen settlements spread across the desert landscape.

When he finishes, he moves the 2007 shot to the top and begins the analysis again. When the roof of a thatched hut burns, the base often survives, leaving a telltale ring. But parts of this region were burned so thoroughly that there's nothing left but a large black scar. If you didn't know that huts were there before, you'd have no idea they were now gone.

"Whoever did this did a good job," he says quietly. "Thorough, at least."

By 8 p.m., he has a final tally: Out of 461 structures in the "before" image, most of them homes, 339 were destroyed, five were probably destroyed and 117 were intact. He couldn't tell whether those 117 were still inhabited.

[edit]

Over the past week, London-based Julie Flint has been gathering intelligence. A researcher and independent journalist who has been working on, and sometimes in, Darfur since 1992, Flint has provided most of the location information the researchers have used for this project. Flint communicates with the Washington team mostly by e-mail, and she tends to send each thought as she has it. Nelson, Blätter and Bromley are used to waking up to an inbox full of one- or two-sentence missives -- locations where Janjaweed militias have been seen massing, updates on which towns one side or the other appears to be taking an interest in, word of where attacks are likely to occur soon. For today's call, Nelson has consolidated the bits on potential attacks into one document, giving the names and locations of towns Flint thinks are at risk.

Before they begin discussing the towns, Bromley notes that each image of Sudan might cost less than he'd expected. Bromley had ordered all of the "before" and many of the "after" images of attacked villages out of DigitalGlobe's archive catalogue. But when he inquired about getting new imagery, he found out that QuickBird was booked solid over Sudan until well into summer.

Apparently, someone with deep pockets is very interested in Sudan, though whether it's government or private enterprise is impossible to know -- DigitalGlobe doesn't release customer information.

Darfur: Car-jackings, Abductions Hinder Aid Efforts

From Reuters

Car-jackings, abductions and ambushes are hindering aid workers involved the world's biggest humanitarian relief effort in Sudan's violent Darfur region, a U.N. report obtained by Reuters on Monday said.

A record 68 aid vehicles were ambushed in the first five months of 2007 and 23 of those attacks involved abductions, the U.N. security report said.

"The trend is still going upwards," it added. "Altogether 77 humanitarian workers have been abducted in that way."

In April, five Senegalese African Union peacekeepers were killed during a car-jacking. The struggling mission has had dozens of vehicles stolen as it has become a target for warring factions in the rebellion in the remote west of Sudan.

Some 14,000 aid workers look after 2.5 million Darfuris forced to seek shelter in miserable camps, and international experts estimate 200,000 people have died in more than four years of rape, killing, looting and disease in the region.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a junior Sudanese cabinet minister and a militia leader accused of colluding in war crimes in Darfur.

The report said there was a high risk of being injured in the confrontations between car-jackers and security forces or in car chases or by being abandoned without communications gear, water or protection.

Those abducted are usually released unharmed but it is "a traumatic experience that leaves psychological scars", it said.

Last week, Sudan agreed to a combined U.N.-AU peacekeeping force of troops and police in Darfur. The United Nations hopes this will improve security in the region bordering Chad.

"There is growing evidence that many of the (stolen) vehicles are being transferred to Chad, where they are sold through intermediate criminal groups," the report said.

Darfur rebels, Chadian opposition forces and Arab militia groups also have reasons to steal vehicles, it added.

Darfur: Mission Faces US Funding Hurdle

From The Guardian

Diplomats who attended the Khartoum talks said they expected the new Darfur force, which will be under UN command, would be paid for from the UN peacekeeping budget. But former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth, president of the UN Foundation, warned Congress last week that the proposed deployment, and other current or future UN operations, were being jeopardised by mounting US debts.

"As of June 2007, the US was $569m (£285m) in permanent arrears to the UN for UN peacekeeping," Mr Wirth said.

"The administration's budget request for the UN peacekeeping account for fiscal year 2008 (beginning in October) was found to be short by an additional, estimated $500m.

"If this is left unaddressed, US arrears to the UN will exceed $1bn by the end of 2007 for peacekeeping alone," he added.

Deborah Derrick, executive director of the Better World Campaign, said the new Darfur agreement was being threatened by the Bush administration's failure to pay its dues.

"If the plan is to put pressure on Sudan's government but the US is unwilling to back it up, it absolutely undermines the credibility of the whole operation," Ms Derrick said.

The shortfall in US contributions towards peacekeeping in Sudan alone, which already has a UN force in the south of the country, would amount to an estimated $116m by the autumn, Ms Derrick said.

Public pressure on the government to pay was growing, she added. Over 30,000 people from all 50 US states had signed an online petition calling on Congress to pay its UN dues.

The state department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said last week that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice regarded paying off US peacekeeping debts as "one of her highest priorities over the next couple of years". But Ms Derrick said that when administration officials were asked when the cash would be handed over, "they look at their toes and say nothing".

Mr Wirth said persistent US debts sat uncomfortably with the Bush administration's growing enthusiasm for UN peacekeeping missions, such as that launched on the Israel-Lebanon border last year and another that the US is proposing in Somalia.

More UN peacekeepers than ever before - in excess of 80,000 - were deployed globally in 2006, according to a study by the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University.

"The event you can probably most anticipate is the phaseout of the US presence in Iraq," Mr Wirth said. The White House would soon be asking for a UN mission to Baghdad, too, he suggested.

He also noted that developing countries, that provide the majority of peacekeeping troops, were footing the bill for richer countries. "Bangladesh holds a $77m unpaid invoice because donor nations, the US in particular, are not paying their bills in full."

Darfur: An Axis of Peace - The US, France, and China

A new report by John Prendergast and Colin Thomas-Jensen for ENOUGH - [PDF of the report is here ]

It should come as no surprise that the crisis in Darfur continues to deepen. Without coordinated multilateral pressure, the regime will continue to promote chaos and attack civilian targets, and both the government and rebels will continue fighting. Without a cost for obstruction, the regime will not facilitate the full and unconditional deployment of an African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) hybrid peacekeeping force. Without an internationally coordinated diplomatic surge, the government and rebels won’t take seriously efforts to revive the peace process.

However, all this could change immediately if policymakers seize the golden diplomatic opportunity that is emerging for Darfur.

For widely divergent reasons, the three countries with the most leverage in Sudan—the U.S., France, and China—all have a vested interest in and desire to help bring peace and stability in Darfur.

* In the U.S., domestic political pressure continues to slowly increase as a fledgling anti-genocide movement develops and demands U.S. leadership and action, leading to a decision by President Bush to move forward with his “Plan B” policy which finally begins to impose a cost for the commission of genocide.

* In France, newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have identified Darfur as a high priority, and they have expressed a willingness to pursue the trans-Atlantic cooperation that their predecessors often avoided.

* In China, as pressure mounts to tie the 2008 Olympics to Beijing’s policies in Sudan and as China’s own foreign policy undergoes a thorough review, the Chinese government has increasing reason to use its influence behind the scenes to help move the Khartoum regime to accept a more robust peacekeeping force and adopt more constructive positions on the peace process.

Faced with these developments, it is no coincidence that the Government of Sudan recently accepted the deployment of the full AU/UN hybrid force. Even uncoordinated pressure can yield results. But without better diplomacy and more pressure than that, the latest Sudanese “agreement” on the hybrid is likely to prove as short-lived and phony as in previous cases since November 2006.

Perhaps the single most influential action that could be taken now to end the horrors in Darfur would be for the U.S., France and China to convene an informal “troika” similar to the “troika” of countries—U.S., UK and Norway—that helped bring an end to the North-South war in Sudan. All three countries now have Special Envoys focused on Darfur. All three have leverage with either the Sudanese regime or the rebels, or both. All three are permanent members of the UN Security Council. All three have compelling political reasons to invest more heavily in supporting solutions in Sudan. All three need to find global issues where common ground on ultimate objectives will allow them to work together and rebuild international cooperation in the midst of global division. And there is no better way for the U.S. to improve bilateral relationships with France and China than to work closely together toward a common goal on something like bringing peace and stability to Sudan.

Darfur: Sudan Ready for Peace Talks

From Reuters

Sudan is ready to attend Darfur peace talks under joint U.N.-African Union mediation to resolve a conflict which has driven 2.5 million people from their homes, its foreign minister said on Monday.

The rebels have split into more than a dozen groups since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions. Many leaders have lost control of their commanders on the ground, creating a chaotic and dangerous environment for aid workers and peacekeepers.

"Any time they want the peace talks to start we have always been ready," Foreign Minister Lam Akol told reporters. "The problem is with the other side."

The AU-U.N. initiative hopes to have all factions lined up to begin talks around August. The former U.N. humanitarian chief in Sudan Manuel Aranda da Silva has said the rebels do not have to unite, but should have a unified position before talks.

Aid workers involved in the world's largest humanitarian operation say an agreement is a priority to create an effective ceasefire. Some have worried about slow progress to bring all factions to the table.

One aid official, who declined to be named, said international mediators should be based in Khartoum to be most effective, not just jetting in and out on short missions.

U.N. special envoy Jan Eliasson, a Swede, appointed Finn Pekka Haavisto to assist him. But Haavisto, like Eliasson, has decided to be based outside Sudan.

"They need to be based here to fully engage in this process and to understand all the stakeholders," said the aid worker.

[edit]

The U.N. Security Council visited Khartoum on Sunday and said it was satisfied that Sudan had unconditionally accepted a joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force of at least 20,000 troops and police and would recommend to the general assembly to fund the mission.

Foreign Minister Akol said the meeting was constructive and that all sides were in agreement, even over command and control of the force, which had been unclear.

"The commander is African," Akol said. "The (command and control) structures that are followed by the U.N. are the ones that we have agreed would be adopted by the African Union."

"So we say the command and control structures are the UN," he added.

Diplomats said China, India and Pakistan had indicated interest in contributing to the force. Akol said those nations were friends of Sudan, but that the final decision would be up to the United Nations and AU.

"They have expressed interest within the hybrid operation," said Akol. "All of them are friends to Sudan -- I don't think we have anything against them."

He added the U.N. contingents of the joint force would wear blue helmets and the Africans, green. But all the troops would wear green AU badges.

Darfur: Security Council to Back Funding for Mission

From Reuters

The UN Security Council will recommend that the world body fund a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission for Darfur, after receiving assurances it would be controlled by the UN, envoys said on Sunday.

After months of talks, threats and negotiations, Khartoum agreed to at least 20,000 troops and police for Darfur, but had said that most soldiers should come from Africa and command and control would be under the AU.

The United Nations was however reluctant to fund a mission where it did not have overall control.

"Command and control processes will be those of the United Nations," said British envoy Emyr Jones Parry. "And that is necessary if indeed this operation is to be funded from the peacekeeping budget of the United Nations," he added.

South African ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said the Security Council would be recommending that the general assembly fund the force, which may entail 20-25,000 troops and police.

"We expect that this will happen within the month," he told reporters after two hours of talks with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir during a visit to Khartoum on Sunday.

Darfur rebels said the Council should not be fooled by glib promises from Khartoum officials.

"They should put more pressure on the Khartoum government and not rely on Khartoum's statements alone," said Ahmed Abdel Shafie, a senior figure in the rebel Sudan Liberation Army.

Since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen difference movements, hindering a joint AU-U.N. push to re-energize a peace process.

Law and order has collapsed in Darfur with almost daily ambushes on aid convoys, while a struggling AU peacekeeping force has also come under attack, losing equipment and dozens of vehicles.

The Security Council has not yet ruled out the threat of UN sanctions on Sudan, and diplomats said there had been discussions about imposing a no-fly zone in Darfur and an arms embargo on the entire country.

Mr. Kumalo declined to speak on behalf of the council, but said South Africa thought sanctions no longer appeared necessary.

"It would be very difficult to make up a solid argument for sanctions," he said.

Aid agencies fear a no-fly zone would endanger the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur, where most staff and supplies are moved by air because of banditry on the roads.

Darfur: Sudan and UN Reach New Peacekeeping Deal

From the International Herald Tribune

The United Nations Security Council and the Sudanese government on Sunday hammered out the major details of a proposal to send more than 20,000 peacekeeping troops to Darfur, clearing the way for a joint force with the African Union, which will be led and paid for by the United Nations.

After a two-hour meeting with senior Sudanese officials in Khartoum, the delegation from the Security Council announced at a news conference there that it had reached an agreement for the force to be under United Nations command, though its day-to-day operations would be run by the African Union. The issue had been a sticking point for countries that might contribute troops to the operation but balked at being under African Union command.

After meeting with Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, and foreign minister, Lam Akol, the Security Council ambassadors said at the news conference that senior Sudanese officials had made an unconditional commitment to the new force.

"I can tell you that the foreign minister told us in no uncertain terms that the government of Sudan accepted the hybrid operation without any conditionality," said Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's ambassador to the United Nations. "The president himself just confirmed the same thing to us."

The statement appeared to lay to rest momentarily concerns that Sudan would insist that only African troops be allowed to serve in the peacekeeping force, which will shore up a beleaguered African Union force of 7,000 troops struggling to maintain order in the lawless region.

The United States had warned that if Sudan set such conditions it could be cause to press ahead with plans to place new sanctions on Sudan over the violence in Darfur. At least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been pushed from their homes since Sudan's government armed tribal militias to fight alongside its army against a rebel group that sought greater autonomy and wealth for the long-neglected region.

Sudan has resisted allowing a United Nations force to deploy in Darfur, saying such a force would represent an unacceptable violation of the country's sovereignty, despite the fact that there is already a large United Nations force in southern Sudan.

The ambassadors said they would ask the United Nations to pay for the force out of its peacekeeping budget. The African Union force has been largely supported by the United States and other Western donor nations, but has been nearly bankrupt for months as Sudan resisted the deployment of a stronger force and donors lost confidence in its peacekeeping efforts.

Akol, the foreign minister, said Sudan was ready to work toward peace. "I can tell you that we, together with the United Nations and the African Union, will work together to resolve the problems in Darfur," he said at the news conference. "This tripartite cooperation should therefore not come as a surprise because we all aim to achieve peace and stability in Darfur."

The new force is not expected to be sent until next year, but when it does it will face chaos in Darfur and an even more complicated military and political environment than at the start of the conflict. The rebel groups are fractured, tribal militias fight among themselves and there is no currently recognized cease-fire.

Emyr Jones Parry, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, said reaching a new cease-fire agreement and new negotiations for a political deal to end the conflict were paramount. "There isn't going to be an enduring peace unless there is a political settlement," Jones Parry said.

Darfur: Oxfam Withdraws From Largest Camp

From Oxfam

“The humanitarian need in Gereida remains enormous, and we have been extremely keen to return. It is with great regret that our security concerns have not been addressed, leaving us with no choice but to relocate our programmes elsewhere. Since the attack, we have repeatedly stressed our desire to return to the town. But the local authorities have not lived up to their responsibility to ensure our staff can work safely. Despite our repeated requests, none of the perpetrators have been held to account, none of the assets stolen in the attack have been returned, and we have not received credible assurances that similar attacks would not take place if we did return,” said Caroline Nursey, Oxfam’s Sudan Programme Manager.

Gereida is under the control of the Minni Minnawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), a signatory to the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006. Since the signing of that agreement the situation in Darfur has deteriorated significantly.

“Without action and assurances from those in control, we cannot operate in areas that have proven to be so extremely unsafe for our staff. The international community needs to ensure that parties to the conflict in Darfur take their responsibilities under international humanitarian law seriously,” said Nursey.

Oxfam has reached an agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that it will take over maintenance of water and sanitation services on a long-term basis. However, Oxfam’s important health education and livelihoods work in the town will cease after August. This work has helped prevent the spread of disease in the vast, crowded camp and also provided opportunities for people to improve their livelihoods and reduce their dependency on aid.

“As usual in Darfur, the people who will suffer most are the civilians who have already been attacked, forced from their homes and had their lives thrown into turmoil. For the last six months they have not had the level of assistance that they need, ” added Nursey.

The attack in Gereida on December 18th 2006 saw armed men raid the compounds of Oxfam and Action Against Hunger/Action Contre La Faim. 12 humanitarian vehicles were stolen, a female aid worker raped and an Oxfam staff member very badly beaten. Other aid workers were subjected to mock executions. Communications equipment and money were also taken. Oxfam staff were among 71 aid workers evacuated from the town as a result. Since then Oxfam has maintained some basic public health services through local staff in the town, but most operations have been suspended.

While the incident in Gereida was particularly serious, targeted attacks on aid workers have now become a daily occurrence in Darfur, gravely threatening the entire humanitarian response on which 4 million people depend. Aid agencies’ ability to reach people in need has been greatly curtailed as a result.

Oxfam began working in Gereida in mid-2004 as people began to seek shelter there from attacks on villages in the surrounding area. In early 2006, work was scaled up considerably to respond to escalating violence, that in just four months more than tripled the population of the camp. Until mid-2006 Oxfam was one of only three agencies working in the town and provided tens of thousands of new arrivals with access to clean water, sanitation and other essential items such as blankets and shelter materials. By the time of the attack in December Oxfam was pumping 15 litres of water per person per day into the camp (more than 2 million litres in total) – compared to four litres per person per day just four months earlier.

Despite the withdrawal from Gereida, Oxfam is still assisting around 400,000 people affected by the Darfur-Chad crisis, by providing life-saving clean water, sanitation, health education and livelihoods work. It is now looking at new areas of South Darfur state in which to extend its work.

Darfur: U.N. Secretary General Says Climate Change is Root of Conflict

From the AP

Climate change is partly to blame for the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, where droughts have provoked fighting over water sources, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a newspaper editorial.

"Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand — an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers," Ban wrote in an editorial that appeared Saturday in The Washington Post. "Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic."

Rainfall in Sudan began declining two decades ago, a phenomenon due "to some degree, from man-made global warming," said Ban, who has made both Darfur and climate change priorities.

Settled farmers and Arab nomadic herders had gotten along until the drought, he wrote, but as conditions worsened, water and food shortages disrupted the peace and "evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today."

Ban said similar ecological problems are behind conflicts in other countries, including Somalia and Ivory Coast.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, known as the janjaweed, a charge the government denies.

After months of U.N. and Western pressure, Sudan agreed in the past week to allow a joint U.N.-African Union force of up to 19,000 peacekeepers to replace the 7,000-member AU mission now in Darfur.

Ban called the agreement "significant progress" after "four years of diplomatic inertia." But he warned that a long-term solution was needed for "the essential dilemma" — the scarcity of good land.

"Any peace in Darfur must be built on solutions that go to the root causes of the conflict," he said.

The U.N. chief called for sustained economic development, possibly involving new irrigation and water storage techniques and efforts to improve health, education and roads.

"The international community needs to help organize these efforts, teaming with the Sudanese government as well as the international aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations working so heroically on the ground," Ban said.

Sudan: Garang Claims Husband 'Assassinated'

From AFP - via POTP

The widow of former Sudanese vice president and southern rebel leader John Garang claimed her husband, who died in a 2005 helicopter crash, had been assassinated, Kenyan television reported on Sunday.

Rebecca Nyadeng' however fell short of laying the blame on anyone.

"Let me tell you what I have always hidden in my mind and my heart. When my husband died, I did not say he was killed because I knew the consequences, but I knew my husband was assassinated," Nyadeng' said in a television report by independent Kenya Television Network (KTN).

Nyadeng', also the roads and transport minister for the semi-autonomous region of southern Sudan, said she refrained from releasing the information after Garang died in order to maintain the unity of the southern Sudanese.

"I knew we had millions of people of southern Sudan and we also had children and I knew they were going to be affected. My husband was a great man, but he had left a vision greater than him," she said.

Nearly a week after ex-rebel leader died, his ally Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said the crash that killed Garang may not have been an accident, and "it may be something else."

But in April 2006, a joint Sudanese-Ugandan probe -- conducted with assistance from US, Russian and Kenyan aviation experts -- ruled out foul play in the crash of the Ugandan chopper that was followed by rioting in several Sudanese cities.

Darfur: Judge and Activists Demand UN Sanctions

From the Independent

Richard Goldstone, the distinguished South African judge, has joinedprominent human rights activists to back UN oil sanctions punishing Sudan for failing to fully co-operate with international efforts to halt mass killings in Darfur.

In a letter to The Independent, the five signatories advocate the establishment of a UN-controlled trust fund allowing Sudan to continue to export oil, but channelling the revenues to help the victims in Darfur.

"Criteria for ending these sanctions would include deployment of the United Nations-African Union hybrid force, an end to attacks on civilians, and an end to the obstruction of humanitarian agencies in Darfur," the letter says.

The Sudanese government gained breathing space earlier this week by agreeing to an international peacekeeping force of up to 19,000 soldiers to protect civilians in Darfur. The move was hailed by the UN and the African Union as a breakthrough, coming after 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.5 million fled after being attacked by government forces and allied Arab militias.

But some UN security council members, including the US and Britain, and human rights campaigners remain sceptical. James Smith, the chief executive of the Aegis Trust, a human rights organisation, said yesterday: "The Sudanese government is masterful at backtracking. Without implementation, acceptance of a peacekeeping force doesn't protect civilians.

"These sanctions should be applied and only lifted after deployment of the hybrid force. The Security Council should use this incentive ... or risk creating false hopes of progress."

Dr Smith signed the letter along with Justice Goldstone, Jan Pronk, a former head of the UN mission to Sudan who was expelled after writing a critical blog, and Kenneth Roth, the executor of Human Rights Watch. The fifth signatory is Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian former commander of the UN force in Rwanda.

DRC: Dinner With a Warlord

The latest from Nick Kristof

One hint that this would be an unusual interview came when the warlord walked in wearing a button reading “Rebels For Christ.”

Then when I reached to sip the café au lait that the guerrilla leaders offered me in their jungle redoubt, they looked reproachful and quickly bowed their heads and said grace.

I’m taking a student and a teacher along on a reporting trip to Africa, and we wanted to look at how civil wars tear countries apart and block the continent’s economic development. So we rented a jeep and drove past the last checkpoints outside the city of Goma, and then jounced along a tortuous dirt road into the hills.

We traveled through gorgeous green hills and forests, thatch-roof villages and mist-shrouded canyons. Government is only a rumor here, for the capital is 1,200 miles away and has no control in the east and offers no services. There is no postal service, no national health or education system, no authority to rein in the ultimate boss in the third world: a man with a gun.

Along the way to see the warlord, we stopped at an elementary school. It is financed by the parents, who pay $9 per year per child to the eight teachers who instruct 520 students. Many parents cannot afford that sum, so they keep their children at home.

The school building hadn’t been kept up since the Belgians ruled Congo in the years before 1960. The Belgians were brutal colonial masters in Congo, but after enduring subsequent rounds of kleptocratic incompetence and civil war, some Congolese feel nostalgic for the lesser tyranny of colonialism.

Finally we were stopped by a band of soldiers who searched us carefully and then led us past more guards with AK-47s and grenade launchers to the sanctum of Laurent Nkunda, the chieftain of a swath of war-torn eastern Congo.

Mr. Nkunda, 40, is a smart and charismatic man with a university education who treated us to several hours of lively conversation in his fluent English, followed by a tasty chicken dinner. He described himself as a devout Pentecostal and said that most of his troops had converted as well; he showed us a church where he said they pray daily, and he showed photos of baptisms of the soldiers.

Then again, the government has issued an international arrest warrant against him for war crimes, and human rights monitors like Refugees International say that his troops have killed and raped civilians and pillaged their villages. He denies the charges.

“I’m not a warlord ... I’m a liberator of the people,” he said.

That’s the problem: So are they all.

More than four million people have died in Congo’s wars since 1998, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II.

Probably no slaughter has gotten fewer column inches — or fewer television minutes — per million deaths. So even after all that suffering, Congo still hasn’t risen to a prominent place on the international agenda.

That’s why I came here with Leana Wen and Will Okun, the student and teacher from my win-a-trip contest. (Video and photos of the trip and blogs by Will and Leana are at nytimes.com/twofortheroad.)

The U.N. did hold elections last year, and much of Congo is indeed more stable today. But here in this region of eastern Congo, a wretched situation is getting even worse.

Since January about 150,000 people have been driven from their homes by renewed violence, and there are widespread fears that a larger war is looming.

“We see war coming,” Mr. Nkunda said, and he pulled out his laptop to show a map indicating that various government-backed forces are being dispatched to attack him. He added: “The only reply to war and ammunition is war and ammunition.”

I told him — a bit nervously — that such tribalism and fighting has torn apart a country that should be one of Africa’s richest. But Mr. Nkunda, who quotes Gandhi, emphasized that what counts here is simply force. “You go by strength,” he said.

There are no easy solutions here, although some steps are essential: supporting professional training and reform of the Congolese security forces, pressuring neighboring Rwanda to support central authority over the full country, bolstering the peace process, and interdicting mineral exports that finance rebel armies. But the most important step is simply for the international community to acknowledge that a war that costs four million lives must be an international priority, even if the victims aren’t staring at us from television screens.

Ethiopia: In Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality

From The New York Times

The rebels march 300 strong across the crunchy earth, young men with dreadlocks and AK-47s slung over their shoulders.

Often when they pass through a village, the entire village lines up, one sunken cheekbone to the next, to squint at them.

“May God bring you victory,” one woman whispered.

This is the Ogaden, a spindle-legged corner of Ethiopia that the urbane officials in Addis Ababa, the capital, would rather outsiders never see. It is the epicenter of a separatist war pitting impoverished nomads against one of the biggest armies in Africa.

What goes on here seems to be starkly different from the carefully constructed up-and-coming image that Ethiopia — a country that the United States increasingly relies on to fight militant Islam in the Horn of Africa — tries to project.

In village after village, people said they had been brutalized by government troops. They described a widespread and longstanding reign of terror, with Ethiopian soldiers gang-raping women, burning down huts and killing civilians at will.

It is the same military that the American government helps train and equip — and provides with prized intelligence. The two nations have been allies for years, but recently they have grown especially close, teaming up last winter to oust an Islamic movement that controlled much of Somalia and rid the region of a potential terrorist threat.

The Bush administration, particularly the military, considers Ethiopia its best bet in the volatile Horn — which, with Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, is fast becoming intensely violent, virulently anti-American and an incubator for terrorism.

But an emerging concern for American officials is the way that the Ethiopian military operates inside its own borders, especially in war zones like the Ogaden.

Anab, a 40-year-old camel herder who was too frightened, like many others, to give her last name, said soldiers took her to a police station, put her in a cell and twisted her nipples with pliers. She said government security forces routinely rounded up young women under the pretext that they were rebel supporters so they could bring them to jail and rape them.

“Me, I am old,” she said, “but they raped me, too.”

Int'l Justice: Taylor Court Looks to Avoid Funding Shortfall

From VOA

As the Special Court for Sierra Leone prepares to resume prosecuting ousted Liberian President Charles Taylor next Monday, the challenge of overcoming a funding shortfall continues to raise concerns about whether the tribunal, funded primarily with voluntary contributions from UN member states, will be able to complete the trial and three others still awaiting verdicts in Freetown. Attorney Elise Keppler with Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, who witnessed the start of the trial, says that donors face an important hurdle to see that justice is carried out.

“The court has got to have additional funding. At this point, it does not have the resources to complete the Taylor trial, to finish its work in Freetown, and that involves three other trials, along with other post-completion activities, including witness protection,” she notes.

A dramatic opening day, boycotted by Taylor on June 4 in the Netherlands, has been followed by a three-week layoff for case preparation. The proceedings will pick up again on Monday, June 25. Taylor’s attorney entered pleas of innocence to 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international law on opening day of the trial. He is accused of fomenting civil war by fueling rebel troops in a neighboring country to enrich himself by providing arms in exchange for Sierra Leonean blood diamonds. Keppler says that the prosecution intends to portray Taylor as masterminding an effort to take over the entire country.

“They believe they have evidence that Taylor was responsible for what they described in summary as a campaign of terror against the Sierra Leonean people and that the murders, the rapes, the amputations were part of this campaign that was a foreseeable consequence of a plan, a joint criminal enterprise, of a group of individuals to take over Sierra Leone,” she observed.

Relocating Taylor’s trial to facilities at the International Criminal Court in the Hague last June was necessitated by concerns of stability in West Africa if the trial were held in Sierra Leone. As for Taylor’s contention that he will be unable to receive a fair trial in a European country, Human Rights Watch attorney Keppler says that the court has a preponderance of African representation.

“It’s very important to note that Taylor is being tried by a UN-backed tribunal composed of Sierra Leoneans and international judges and staff. This is not a European tribunal, and there is a significant African representation and also a Sierra Leonean representation on this court,” she notes.

Assessing fairness, Keppler points out that officials of the Special Court for Sierra Leone have gone to great lengths to meet Taylor’s legal concerns.

“In terms of the resource question, the key here is that Taylor is entitled to adequate facilities and time to prepare his defense. The judges have been addressing concerns raised by Taylor for several months now. And it’s important to find that the trial had been pushed back several times in order to accommodate concerns about needing additional time to prepare. The trial was initially scheduled to start on April 2, and then was pushed back to June 4, and an additional three weeks were then scheduled to provide some further time for Taylor’s defense to prepare, creating this adjournment that we’re currently in,” she explained.

Darfur: Oxfam Withdraws From Largest Camp

From Reuters

British aid agency Oxfam said on Saturday it was withdrawing permanently from Gereida in Sudan's Darfur region, home to the largest population of Darfuris driven from their homes over four years of conflict.

In a coordinated attack on three aid agency bases in Gereida in December, an aid worker was raped, an Oxfam staff member badly beaten and others subjected to mock executions.

Since then most operations have remained suspended in the area controlled by the former rebel faction of Minni Arcua Minnawi, the only leader to sign a May 2006 peace deal with the Khartoum government.

"Despite our repeated requests, none of the perpetrators have been held to account, none of the assets stolen in the attack have been returned, and we have not received credible assurances that similar attacks would not take place if we did return," said Caroline Nursey, Oxfam's Sudan programme manager.

Oxfam provided water and sanitation, healthcare and livelihood education to 130,000 Darfuris encamped around Gereida town. The International Committee for the Red Cross will take over the provision of water.

"As usual in Darfur, the people who will suffer most are the civilians who have already been attacked, forced from their homes and had their lives thrown into turmoil. For the last six months they have not had the level of assistance that they need," said Nursey.

The conflict has driven some 2.5 million from their homes.

Sudan last week agreed to allow a joint U.N.-African Union force of at least 20,000 police and troops, mostly African, deploy to the region. But questions over who will command and control the mission remain.

Ambassadors of the Security Council will arrive in Khartoum on Sunday and meet President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

"The UN Security Council's urgent priority has to be to get all of the different armed groups to stop targeting civilians and aid workers and adhere to a ceasefire with immediate effect," Oxfam said in a separate statement on Saturday.

Diplomats say the ambassadors are likely to press Bashir to accept overall U.N. command and control of the force before they pass any resolution to fund the mission.

Security Council members have discussed the imposition of a no-fly zone and sanctions on Sudan.

Aid agencies have expressed concern that a no-fly zone could endanger their staff who fly around Darfur, the size of France, because many roads are too dangerous.

Darfur: Rebels Suspicious of Khartoum Deal on Force

From Reuters

Darfur rebels view Sudan's acceptance of a joint African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force with suspicion, and insist the United Nations should have overall command and control, an unresolved part of the deal.

After months of talks, threats and negotiations, Khartoum agreed to accept a joint AU-U.N. force of at least 20,000 troops and police but said the majority of the troops must come from Africa and command and control should be left to the AU.

The United Nations, which will be expected to fund the mission, has said it wants overall command of the force.

"This is a good step," said Jar el-Neby Abdelkarim, leader of a large rebel faction in Darfur. "Forces to protect the people are always a good thing."

"But we reject any African Union control over these forces. They are weak logistically and inexperienced. The United Nations has to have command and control," he told Reuters by telephone from Darfur.

Since an AU-mediated Darfur peace deal in May 2006, signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions, the groups have split into more than a dozen factions, creating havoc and a collapse of law and order in Sudan's remote west.

Ahmed Abdel Shafie, leader of a breakaway rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction, said the Khartoum government had no credibility because they had promised many times to disarm the militia they mobilised to quell the revolt and had failed to do so.

"Khartoum are always saying something and doing the opposite," he said. "The African Union are very influenced by the Sudanese government so we don't trust them. The United Nations must have command."

Darfur: U.N. Meets AU Over Peacekeeping Mission

From the AP

U.N. Security Council ambassadors met African Union officials on Saturday to discuss Sudan's agreement four days ago to allow up to 19,000 peacekeepers in the war-wracked Darfur region.

The ambassadors and African Union officials would like to see a joint AU-U.N. peacekeeping force as soon as possible, said Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, without giving a timeframe.

On Wednesday, Akuei Bona Malwal, the deputy head of Sudan's diplomatic mission in Ethiopia, said the force could be in Darfur by October, depending on how quickly the United Nations and African Union are able to get troops and funds.

"This morning (Saturday) we debated at length about Darfur. The clear understanding between us is now moving forward speedily" on the joint force, Parry told journalists.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that a group of African Union, U.N. and Sudanese officials will work out the details of who will contribute troops to the joint force, when it deploy and how it will be funded.

The U.N. and Western governments have been pressing Sudan for months to accept a U.N. plan for a larger "hybrid" force of U.N. and AU peacekeepers in place of the 7,000-strong AU force now in Darfur. Sudan initially accepted the plan in November but has backtracked since.

African Union officials assured the U.N. Security Council delegation, Sudan's acceptance of the joint force Tuesday "was unconditional," Khalilzad told journalists. "We will go and talk to the Sudanese government next to hear from them their own perspective on this agreement."

The ill-equipped and underfunded AU force has been unable to stop four years of warfare that have left more than 200,000 dead.

The U.N. delegation travels to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Sunday.

The ambassadors would also like to see aid agencies work without hindrance in Darfur, and those agencies that have been banned be allowed to resume their work there, Parry said.

Chad: France to Begin Humanitarian Airlifts

Reuters

France will provide air support to humanitarian organizations supplying food and medicine to refugee camps in eastern Chad, a defense ministry spokesman said on Friday.

"At the request of the president of the republic, we will provide air transport between Abeche in eastern Chad and Goz Beida in the south-east of the country," defense ministry spokesman Christophe Prazuck said.

The flights may begin from Sunday. He said between 30,000-40,000 refugees from Chad and the neighboring Darfur region were in refugee camps near Goz Beida.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner proposed the humanitarian airlifts when he visited the region recently but the offer was initially declined by the government of Chad.

A Transall transport aircraft will be added to three aircraft in place in the region. Engineers will be sent to back up a force of around 100 soldiers in place in Abeche.

Uganda: Damning Report on War Crimes

From the Berkeley-Tulane Initiative for Vulnerable Populations - the report itself is here [PDF]

A report released today (Friday, June 15) by the University of California, Berkeley, and Tulane University provides hard data on forced conscription into the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of women and children to serve as soldiers, servants or sex slaves in northern Uganda.

The report documents rising violence in the 20-year-long conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and Ugandan government forces, which have been negotiating a ceasefire. Data was collected from rehabilitation centers in the war-torn, eastern African republic by members of the Berkeley-Tulane Initiative for Vulnerable Populations. The group is made up of faculty and researchers from UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center and Tulane University's Payson Center for International Development.

The International Criminal Court, a permanent tribunal that prosecutes individuals for war crimes and handles situations referred to it by the United Nations Security Council, has issued indictments against LRA leader Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed spirit medium, and four other commanders. The Berkeley-Tulane report, "Abduction: The Lord's Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda," could be made available to the court's Office of the Prosecutor if the rebel leaders are brought to trial, the researchers said.

"Our research shows that Kony and his henchmen abducted as many as 38,000 children and 37,000 adults into his rebel army over the past 11 years," said Eric Stover, coauthor of the report and faculty director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center. "These conscripted civilians were forced to commit horrible crimes, including the mutilation and killing of fellow villagers and even family members."

Darfur: Khartoum Wins Diplomatic Victory Over Force

From Reuters

Sudan has won a diplomatic victory by accepting a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur on terms that, once again, buy it more time and stave off sanctions, analysts say.

After months of negotiations, Sudan accepted a joint force of at least 20,000 troops and police, but said it would be under AU command and control and most troops would be African, conditions analysts say weaken its ability to protect 2.5 million Darfuris driven from their homes by four years of conflict.

"This has to count as a diplomatic victory for the regime," said Eric Reeves, a U.S. academic and Darfur activist. "Time and time again they've had their backs apparently against the wall, but have wiggled out to retain overall control of the security crisis in Darfur."

"Anything that causes delays is to (Khartoum)'s advantage, as is any type of agreement that leaves them basically unscathed in terms of power within Sudan," said Sudan expert John Ashworth.

The United Nations and the AU hailed Sudan's acceptance of a joint force as a breakthrough, no matter whether it resulted from threats of sanctions and international arrest warrants for a junior minister and allied militia leader for war crimes, or from open discussions and negotiations.

But many remain sceptical, noting that Khartoum has signed many deals that have seen little in the way of implementation.

Despite numerous signed agreements, Khartoum has failed to disarm militia who continue to attack civilians in Darfur.

An east Sudan deal has seen little progress, last year's Darfur peace accord only plunged the remote west deeper into chaos, and a north-south deal is in deadlock over the basic issues of oil and borders.

"The announcement comes in the wake of countless broken promises and therefore in an atmosphere of mistrust," said actress Mia Farrow, who is leading a campaign to persuade China to put pressure on Khartoum over Darfur. "The fact that the agreement is conditional suggests that it will not be implemented any time soon."

"We are looking at a time line imposed over immeasurable human suffering," she added.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in Darfur from rape, killing, disease and hunger. Khartoum puts the death toll at 9,000.

Top U.N. officials say that while the world's largest humanitarian operation has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, the collapse of law and order in a region the size of France means aid convoys are attacked almost daily. At least four aid agencies have pulled out of Darfur.

Analysts say Khartoum has managed to shelve a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution authorising a strong U.N. peacekeeping force of more than 23,000 to replace the struggling 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur.

Some AU soldiers in Darfur go months without pay and have themselves been attacked and had their vehicles and ammunition stolen, even by the one rebel faction which signed last year's AU-mediated peace deal.

Khartoum had asked the United Nations to fund the African mission to resolve these problems, and analysts say the latest agreement has granted Sudan's wish.

"(Khartoum) has been seeking to neuter the UN force established in Resolution 1706 for almost a year now, and I am certain the regime views this 'agreement' as a big step forward in that effort," said Lawrence Rossin, a senior member of the activist Save Darfur Coalition.

Reeves said the joint force is being formed under vague conditions which will hinder the mission's effectiveness.

"Few are happy with this hybridisation... the key issue of command and control remains unsettled -- a critically important issue," Reeves said.

Rossin said the force would be ineffective: "The AU has no capabilities ... either to provide enough qualified troops and police, or to provide effective command and control."

"I am confident that the Sudanese regime also expects it to be ineffective," Rossin added. "What this 'agreement' is very unlikely to achieve for the people of Darfur is effective protection from violence by international peacekeepers."

But Reeves said the people of Darfur, who languish in miserable makeshift camps in fear of attack and too scared to go home, needed to grasp this tiny seed of hope.

"The security crisis is so desperate that we do not have the luxury of abandoning this last international effort to protect civilians, especially in the camps."

Darfur: Fresh Hopes

From Julie Flint for the BBC - via POTP

At least two and a half million people have fled their homes in fear of the government-backed Arab Janjaweed militia in Darfur. Despite the ongoing crisis, there are signs of progress in the North.

We were halfway across a valley in rebel-controlled North Darfur when the first shots were fired, apparently from a nearby hill.

Soon they were coming thick and fast.

Our driver stopped. We all got out and hid, as best we could, behind our vehicle.

It was painfully clear that we were being shot at - not over.

Our escort, a law graduate from Khartoum University who is now a commander in the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) - the main rebel group in Darfur - eventually located the source of fire and determined that it was friendly fire.

He walked towards the attackers with his hands in the air.

To us, crouching behind the car with bullets flying all around, it seemed as if he walked for ever.

Finally, the shooting stopped and our escort returned.

He explained that an SLA commander patrolling the valley on the look out for government forces, had thought we were Janjaweed: militiamen who move on horse and camelback but who occasionally have vehicles similar to those of the government forces.

We were returning from a village that had been burned by the Janjaweed in 2003, at the very beginning of the war in Darfur.

The village is still uninhabited.

Perhaps understandably, we were mistaken for the enemy.

It was a very unnerving 15 minutes or so.

But it was the only time we heard shots fired in anger in more than three weeks behind rebel lines in North Darfur.

A catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions has engulfed Darfur in the five years since the rebels took up arms to fight for an end to marginalisation and oppression, and for an end to government support for Arab militias.

The statistics are terrifying, yet statistics do not tell the whole story.

There are some encouraging signs in some rebel-controlled areas of Darfur.

Especially in the areas that I visited: the part of North Darfur that is controlled by rebels who reject the peace agreement signed last year by the government and one rebel group - the faction of the SLA that is controlled by Minni Minawi.

Since Minawi signed the Darfur Peace Agreement, his forces have been expelled from rural North Darfur.

The rebel commanders who have replaced him are not completely united, but they have a unity of purpose that is encouraging, and that marks a clear break with the often criminal behaviour of Minawi's men.

The men now in charge want a negotiated solution to the war and are committed to new peace talks - if, and it is a big "if" - the SLA can unite behind a common platform all across Darfur. Not just in the north.

They have begun making overtures to neighbouring Arab tribes who have been fighting against them and have abolished the crippling taxes that Minawi imposed on civilians - civilians already pushed to the brink by the death and devastation heaped upon them by the government and its Janjaweed allies.

They have stopped bringing civilians in front of military courts and have begun asking community leaders to re-open the civilian courts that Minawi closed.

In the village of Bakaore, I met Omda Hamid Manna, a chief who once presided over one of the most important civilian courts in North Darfur, in the village of Dor.

He related how he had been kidnapped by Minawi's men, tortured and only released after payment of a whopping ransom.

A few days before we met, he had been approached by the SLA faction that ousted Minawi and asked to re-open his court.

Some power was being handed back to civilians, and he was jubilant.

"Minawi did very bad things," he said. "He took our animals and collected our money. He took food aid from civilians. If you protested, you were beaten or killed. But the SLA is good now. It is not taking away our rights."

Late last year, the government tried to recapture the parts of North Darfur that are controlled by Minawi's opponents. It failed.

The sandy plains surrounding the village of Um Sidir bear witness to the magnitude of its defeat.

For as far as the eye can see, the sands are covered in half-buried skeletons, brightly coloured toothbrushes and piles of weapons that were abandoned as Khartoum's men ran for their lives on the 9 September 2006.

Only one government commander did not flee when the rebels attacked, with the sun behind them shining straight into their enemy's eyes.

Today his burnt and cannibalised car stands alone in the middle of the battlefield.

We buried what we thought was his body as best we could with the only thing to hand - a piece of cardboard.

Since then, violence in this part of Darfur has decreased significantly.

People are terrified of the Janjaweed but no longer, on the whole, afraid of their own rebel movement.

It is not a peace, and what it is is fragile, and localised. But it is a beginning and it deserves recognition and encouragement.

Somalia: NATO Offers Lifeline to AU Peacekeepers

From Sapa-AFP

NATO defence ministers agreed on Friday to provide an airlift for embattled African peacekeepers struggling to halt fighting in Somalia.

Alliance spokesperson James Appathurai said the ministers had responded to a request for transport support from the African Union, which runs a force of 1 700 Ugandan troops in Somalia.

"NATO has agreed to stand ready to help," Appathurai told reporters. He said no specific requests for flights had yet been received, but added that the NATO assistance mission would be similar to that already provided to fly rotations of African Union troops in and out of Sudan's Darfur region.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned against one another, defending clan fiefdoms.

he transitional government, formed in 2004, has struggled to assert any real control and was only able to enter the capital, Mogadishu, with backing from Ethiopian troops who helped dislodge an Islamic movement from the capital six months ago.

Since then, government forces and their Ethiopian allies have had to battle insurgents and clan militiamen in Mogadishu.

Thousands of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in the fighting.

The UN Security Council on Thursday emphasised "the urgent need" for the United Nations to start planning for a possible peacekeeping mission in Somalia to replace the African Union force.

Darfur: China Welcomes Agreement

From AFP

China, one of Sudan's biggest backers, has welcomed its acceptance of a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force for the country's troubled Darfur region.

A Sudanese diplomat in Ethiopia confirmed on Wednesday that Sudan has accepted the mission after receiving assurances that a "hybrid" AU-U.N. force of 17,000 to 19,000 troops will not be open-ended and Sudan will remain in control of its borders.

"China welcomes the deployment of a hybrid AU-UN force in Darfur and the joint statement," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement posted on the ministry's Web site late Wednesday.

"The facts have shown that dialogue and equal negotiation is an effective approach to political solution of the Darfur issue, and the consultation between AU, UN and Sudan is an effective mechanism," Qin said.

China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports, sells the African country weapons and military aircraft, and has blocked efforts to send U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur without Sudanese consent.

But its involvement in Sudan is becoming a liability as the country tries to portray itself as a responsible power while welcoming the world to the 2008 Olympics, a massive source of national pride. Some activists campaigning for an end to the Darfur conflict have called for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics if no solution is found.

In what appeared to be a response to international pressure, China recently appointed a special representative for Africa to focus on Darfur, and has publicly urged Khartoum to give the U.N. a greater role in trying to resolve the conflict.

Darfur: The UN May Send Troops, Eventually

From the Economist

FINALLY, after almost a year of negotiations, Sudan's government has agreed to let a “hybrid” African Union (AU) and UN peacekeeping force be sent to its ruined western region of Darfur. The deal worked out at the AU's headquarters in Addis Ababa follows an agreement earlier in the year to let in a “heavy package” of armoured vehicles and helicopters. The new force will probably comprise 17,600 troops, including a rapid-reaction force, plus a further 3,000 police. Given that up to 300,000 people have already been killed in Darfur and another 2.5m displaced, this is hopeful.

But, as ever, Sudan's government, which has long denounced any UN deployment in Darfur as neo-colonial, may well try to weaken the deal. The hybrid force, it says, will be an AU mission, with limited backing from the UN. Since Sudan is a powerful member of the AU, it would be able to exercise a degree of control over any AU force on the ground, as it does over the AU's floundering 7,000 soldiers and police already there.

America and others, however, see the new force as essentially a UN one dressed up in the green helmets of the AU. The Sudanese delegation in Addis Ababa seemed to suggest that Sudan would accept non-African troops in Darfur, if there were not enough African troops on offer. But at the same time Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, at a meeting in his capital, Khartoum, with France's new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, insisted that only Africans should be deployed. That set off alarm bells in America, which is worried that Mr Bashir will use the issue to delay deployment. The AU is presently unable to fulfil a pledge to provide a mere 6,000 troops to keep the peace in Somalia.

In any event, no extra troops will be deployed before next spring. Some people think Sudan may have signed the deal precisely because it knows it will be ineffectual. Though the proposed new force is due to include eight attack-helicopters, Mr Bashir knows there is still no enthusiasm for enforcing a no-fly zone over Darfur. So, for the time being, the government-backed janjaweed militia may continue to attack Darfuri rebels and civilians alike, albeit more warily, and the splintered rebel groups are likely to continue fighting their local battles.

Darfur: Australia Rejects UN Plea

From NEWS.com.au

AUSTRALIA has rejected a UN request to send Diggers to war-ravaged Darfur in Sudan, fearing it would overstretch the nation's defence force.

The decision, which has not been announced, comes despite earlier promises by the Howard Government that Australia would not "turn our back" on the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur.

However, The Australian reports that Defence Minister Brendan Nelson rejected the UN request because of the Australian Defence Force's already heavy global commitments.

Sudan this week agreed to accept non-African troops into Darfur for the first time as part of a hybrid African Union-UN force to help stop fighting that has killed more than 200,000 and displaced 2.5 million since 2003.

The UN made the formal request to Australia in anticipation of Sudan's decision and is believed to have asked Australia to contribute as much as it reasonably can to a new AU-UN force of up to 19,000 troops.

Specifically, it asked Australia to supply logistics and air movement specialists as well as military observers.

Dr Nelson's office yesterday confirmed the UN request, but said no more Australian troops would be sent to Sudan beyond the 15 ADF personnel currently working as part of the UN's peacekeeping force in southern Sudan - a separate conflict zone from that of Darfur in western Sudan.

"Australia has approximately 15 people in the southern Sudan as part of the UN mission and we currently have no plan to send any additional personnel (to any part of the Sudan)," Dr Nelson told The Australian last night.

The decision not to provide military assistance to Darfur contrasts with Australia's commitment of 1000 troops to Somalia and 300 to Rwanda in the 1990s as part of international relief efforts.

It also sits uneasily with the Government's claims that Darfur has become one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

In 2004, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer promised Australia would not abandon Darfur, saying, "We shouldn't just turn our backs and say that doesn't matter".

However, the ADF's overseas deployments are currently at record peacetime levels, with about eight per cent of all military personnel now serving overseas.

This includes 3850 troops deployed overseas in seven operations, including 1100 in East Timor, 970 in Afghanistan and 1575 in and around Iraq. In addition, the ADF has 450 personnel offshore monitoring Australia's maritime approaches.

Australia has committed more than $30 million in emergency assistance to the Darfur region since 2004, describing the conflict as a human rights "catastrophe".

Darfur: UN Experts Hold Sudan Accountable for Attacks

From VOA - via POTP

U.N. human rights experts say Sudan should be held accountable for massive human rights violations in Darfur. The experts have submitted a report that calls for the Sudanese government to take specific steps to improve conditions in war-torn Darfur. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

The experts have presented the Sudanese government with what amounts to a code of conduct. They say the occurrence of human rights violations in Darfur is widely known and sending another fact-finding mission to Darfur is not necessary. What is needed, they say, is finding practical ways to stop the abuse.

Simi Samar is UN special investigator on Sudan who chaired the group of experts. She says the report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council is trying to find practical ways to implement recommendations that have been made in previous fact-finding missions.

"The few issues that we have to highlight," said Simi Samar. "One, the protection of human rights for civilians is the responsibility of the government. And two, we do not see any military solution for the Darfur problem. So, it should be more political and dialogue and inclusive in order to end the suffering of the people. Three, we insist on accountability and justice. The people who committed the crime, they have to be brought to justice in order to build the confidence between the public and the government in Sudan."

The United Nations estimates more than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since war between the Sudanese-backed Arab janjaweed militia and rebel African groups broke out four years ago. Another 2.5 million people have been driven out of their homes.

The experts have presented more than 30 detailed recommendations that they want Sudan to meet within three to 12 months. A Swiss expert on internally displaced persons, Walter Kalin, says the Sudanese government must halt all attacks against civilians in Darfur.

"What is needed in the short-term and can be done is first a high-level order given to the security forces not to attack civilians, to distinguish between civilians and military objectives," said Walter Kalin. "And, then to translate that kind of political commitment and order into the operational orders given, for instance, to pilots that go out."

The report also demands Khartoum orders its armed forces to stop rapes, disappearances and torture. It warns these actions may amount to war crimes. It also urges immediate protection and unimpeded access for humanitarian workers.

The U.N. report says the Sudanese government has pledged to implement the recommendations.

Darfur: Will U.N. Peacekeepers Really be Allowed In?

From Eric Reeves in The New Republic

ast August, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706 authorized the rapid deployment of a robust force of 22,500 U.N. troops and civilian police to Sudan, with an explicit mandate to protect civilians and humanitarian operations and attempt to staunch the spreading genocidal violence in the Darfur region. Had it been deployed, such a force could have done much to avert the massive human displacement and destruction of the past nine months. But the Sudanese regime refused to allow the peacekeepers into the country, and the United Nations declined to intervene without Khartoum's approval.

That approval seemed to come on Tuesday, as the Khartoum regime agreed to allow a joint peacekeeping force comprising U.N. troops and African Union forces into Darfur. Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for the African Union, called the announcement "a breakthrough moment." By now, however, there is a long history of such breakthroughs on Darfur--each of which has proved worthless.

It has been almost three years since the regime made the first of numerous agreements to disarm the deadly Janjaweed militia. Yet, last September, a U.N. panel of experts found that Khartoum was arming the Janjaweed more heavily than ever. Three years ago Khartoum also agreed to grant unfettered access to aid organizations operating in Darfur. Today, humanitarian workers continue to face threats and obstructionism in their struggle to provide succor to the 4.7 million people affected by Khartoum's relentless war of attrition. Key terms of the January 2005 peace agreement that ended 22 years of North-South conflict, such as equitable wealth sharing, establishing a legitimate North-South border, and disarming regime-allied militia forces, have similarly not been implemented, threatening to reignite the conflict. And Khartoum has also f