Darfur: Rebels Say Bombing Drives Thousands from Homes

From Reuters

Darfur rebels accused the government of bombing South Darfur on Thursday, the latest attack in an aerial campaign that has driven thousands of people from their homes over the past month.

"There is aerial bombardment on a daily basis -- bombing by MiG 29 and by Antonov (in South Darfur)," Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) commander Abel Aziz el-Nur Ashr Ashr said.

Ashr said 20,000 people in the area south west of Adila town near the eastern border of Darfur had fled their homes to the bush without access to clean water during the fighting which has been ongoing for the past month.

Ashr said bombers attacked again in South Darfur early on Thursday. The army was not immediately available to comment.

On Wednesday JEM and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) attacked an army base in the Kordofan region next to Darfur, which they said was the logistical and supply centre for ongoing attacks in South Darfur.

The rebels said 15 soldiers were killed.

"We are still controlling the military camp," Ashr told Reuters by telephone. "We have four injured and three killed."

He said all the army prisoners who rebels caught during the assault had been released.

The army said late on Wednesday denied there was an army base in Wad Banda and said rebels had attacked the town but that government troops had them surrounded.

Ashr said on Thursday the army was nowhere in sight.

"They retreated and there's no one now," he said, adding rebels expected the government to retaliate.

The African Union peacekeeping force, struggling to defend itself, has declared the area no-go, making it difficult to verify facts.

Darfur: UN Official Warns of Militarised Camps

From Reuters

Camps teeming with frustrated refugees in Sudan's Darfur region have become militarised and present a danger that cannot be ignored, a U.N. official was quoted as saying on Thursday.

The U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, told the BBC the presence of weapons in the camps and the proximity of the Sudanese military outside refugee centres made for a potentially explosive situation.

"If you have large numbers of people in camps, you have the government of Sudan's military presence in the area, there are bound to be clashes from time to time," Holmes was quoted as saying on the BBC Web site.

"The politicisation and militarisation on the ground in the camps is a fact of life you can't ignore," he added.

Last week, the Sudanese military attacked Kalma Camp, in South Darfur, where it said rebels behind deadly attacks on police were hiding.

Holmes denied the camps had become rebel bases, but he said young men in the centres had grown frustrated and politicised.

Darfur: U.N. Police Chief Calls for More Peacekeepers

From Reuters

Major Western nations must offer more police for Darfur to end four years of violence, the retiring U.N. police chief said on Thursday as the world body struggles to find enough officers for the Sudanese province.

The United Nations Security Council has agreed to send 26,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to the Western Sudanese region to end four years of killing and violence that has left an estimated 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. The mission will need about 6,400 police. But outgoing U.N. police chief Mark Kroeker said the number of officers from major developed nations was dwindling and countries such as Britain, the United States, Canada, Italy and France needed to offer more.

"The countries that have been talking about Darfur need to now do something about Darfur with their deployment of police in probably the most desperate place in the world," Kroeker, an American, told reporters at a police conference in Canberra.

Kroeker, in Australia for a meeting of the International Policing Advisory Council of police chiefs and academics, said countries always faced a difficult choice over releasing police from fighting local crime to take part in overseas missions.

In the past year, United Nations police deployments increased by 30 percent, with the numbers likely to grow significantly in the coming year from the 10,000 police currently on missions.

"The challenge is always a human challenge," the former Los Angeles deputy police chief said. "It really needs good hearted police officers, who are compassionate and competent."

Australian Andrew Hughes, who has been appointed to replace Kroeker as the U.N.'s police chief, said more than 60 countries had committed police to the Darfur mission.

But more were needed for what would be the largest international police operation ever mounted, he said.

Hughes, who was commissioner of police in Fiji before he was expelled by the leaders of a military coup last year, said the key to success in Darfur relied upon establishing a lasting law and justice system.

"You can't just throw police at a problem like that. We have to have proper court system, public defenders, public prosecutors, prisons, a justice system, human rights organisations, NGO's, monitoring watchdogs," Hughes said.

Darfur: Pronk Slams EU for Apologizing to Sudan

From the Sudan Tribune

Jan Pronk the former special representative of the UN Secretary General to Sudan has criticized the European Union for offering an apology to Khartoum over the action of the EU envoy to Sudan.

In an interview with Radio France Internationale on Wednesday, Jan Pronk described the EU apology to Sudan as "mistake" and "counterproductive". He further said “there is nothing to apologize for; the diplomat just did his job.”

Kent Degerfelt, EU representative to Sudan, was declared persona non grata last week along with Nuala Lawlor Canadian chargé d’affaires for what Khartoum presented as "interfering" in Sudan’s affairs. However, last Saturday Sudan invited the EU envoy back alleging that Louis Michel, the European development commissioner, had apologized to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir.

Pronk said he was surprised by the move of the EU towards the Sudanese government. He argued that this apology will constitute a precedent in the relations between the EU and Sudan.

He also said that Sudanese have succeeded to divide the EU and Canada.

"What now has happened also is what exactly Sudanese do, divide and rule. They made division between Canada and the EU (…). It is a mistake and totally counterproductive."

In tit-for-tat move, Canadian Foreign minister decided to expel a Sudanese diplomat from Ottawa. "Wherever they are posted, Canada’s diplomats will continue to work to uphold Canadian values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law," he said.

The former envoy said that Sudan needs the EU for its humanitarian assistance and for its political support.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti said the two Western diplomats were considered as persona non grata because they contacted the security agencies over the detention of a leading member in the Democratic Unionist Party, Mahmoud Hassanein. He is arrested over an alleged coup attempt.

Karti further said "It is necessary now to send a clear message to whoever thinks that the kind of relationship between Sudan and the United Nations, and the international community in general, is that of submissiveness, complacence about the concepts or beliefs that the Westerners want the Sudanese Government to admit as fait accompli."

Sudan: Canada Says Diplomat to be Ousted

From AP

A Sudanese diplomat will be expelled from Canada within days in response to Sudan's decision to kick out Canada's charge d'affaires, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

The Foreign Affairs Department said the Sudanese diplomat, who has yet to be identified, will be ordered to leave the country by Saturday. Ministry officials said the diplomat would hold a similar rank to Canadian acting charge d'affaires Nuala Lawlor, who the Sudanese government ordered expelled last Thursday after accusing him of "meddling in its affairs."

"Canada considers the expulsion of our charge d'affaires to be entirely unjustified," Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said in a statement.

Along with Lawlor, Sudan said it was expelling the European Union's top diplomat in the country for "meddling" in its affairs. But the government later said it would allow Kent Degerfelt to complete the remaining three weeks of his mandate as long as he was replaced by someone new.

On Monday, Sudan also ordered out the head of CARE International's operations in the country. No reason was given for the official's expulsion, but the group had been directing one of the largest private aid efforts in Darfur.

CAR: Bush War Leaves Villages Deserted

From Reuters

The village of Korosigna in northern Central African Republic is barely recognisable to those who once lived there.

Every house is either demolished, abandoned or burned to the ground. Weeds and bushes have taken hold. Many homes are barely visible as the forest has moved in and engulfed the ruins.

According to locals, government soldiers attacked Korosigna without warning in January 2006, part of a two-year-old bush war fought against rag-tag rebels across northern parts of the former French colony, landlocked in the heart of Africa.

Like countless other villages in northern Central African Republic, it has sat empty ever since, its inhabitants too terrified to come back.

"They came primarily to kill us," said Kode Grégoire, the village chief, standing on a pile of debris which was once his home. "They said nothing. They started shooting and we fled. Then they burnt our houses."

President Francois Bozize is preparing to hold a national dialogue in coming months with rebel groups and political foes to try to end the fighting.

He has signed peace pacts with two rebel groups this year but stability has proved elusive.

Roads once packed with villagers selling produce and going to market are totally deserted. Only aid workers and rebels still move about, locked in an uneasy co-existence after rebels killed a Doctors Without Borders volunteer two months ago.

While government forces are still in control of key towns in the north such as Paoua and Bossangoa, the rest of the region -- purportedly under rebel control -- is haunted by an eerie calm.

Civilians duck into the bush if they hear an engine approach, fearful it could be the army.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates at least 265,000 people have been forced from their homes since the rebels began their bid to overthrow Bozize in late 2005.

The lucky ones have crossed into neighbouring Chad or Cameroon as refugees: those too old, sick or terrified to move have been left behind to eke out a living in the forests.

"Life in the bush is very hard," said Mbaidoum Alfonse, a 70-year-old farmer whose son was shot dead by the army when his village of Bodouli was attacked.

"There is no drinking water, there is no health care, there are no schools, we sleep badly and we eat badly."

According to aid workers in the region, the majority of attacks on villages have been carried out by government forces. Many witnesses say it is Bozize's elite Presidential Guard with their distinctive green berets who are responsible.

Often the violence follows a similar pattern: the rebels strike government positions and the army retaliates by attacking nearby villages suspected of harbouring them.

Many of the internally displaced civilians in the country return to their villages for only a few hours each day, leaving again at night to sleep hidden in the bush.

"There is no school in the bush so I come, I teach, and then together with the children we leave each day by 2 p.m.," said Bekiya Valentine, the village pharmacist in Bemal near the border with Chad, who started teaching as an act of good will.

In other areas, "bush schools" have been set up in the jungle, away from the main roads.

"We are trapped," said Jean-Jacques Majitoloum, a teacher who fled his home 18 months ago and teaches hundreds of children in a forest clearing. "We can't leave, we can't see our family."

In one empty village, an old man tending his fields cuts a lonely figure. His legs are so crippled he can barely move.

Asked why he did not leave with the others, he replied: "I cannot walk to reach the bush. I'm not scared -- I don't fear death anymore. If they want to kill me they will do it, and there's nothing I can do."

Uganda: Special Court for LRA/Victims Want LRA Tried Locally

From The Voice

THE Ugandan government plans to set up a special crimes court to try the top leaders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The court would function as an alternative to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted and issued arrest warrants against LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three other senior commanders.

Kony and his men are wanted for allegedly committing grave atrocities such as murder, rape, mutilation, torture, abduction, and forced recruitment during the two-decade long war in northern Uganda.

But the government said last week that a final decision on the formation of a special court will be taken after consultations with war victims.

The consultations, which are part of the peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA began last Monday and are being mediated by the Government of southern Sudan.

"We have discussed this issue with legal experts - local and international - and there is a possibility of government forming a unique legal system designed to achieve lasting peace and accountability," Dr Ruhakana Rugunda told reporters in Kampala last Tuesday.

Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, the internal affairs minister, is the government's lead negotiator at the talks that have thus far lasted a year and are being held in the Southern Sudanese town of Juba.

"We may decide to come up with a special court for certain individuals if the victims wish so," the minister said after the news conference in kampala, Tuesday.

From Reuters

Most of the victims of Uganda's 20-year war want local courts to try the Lord's Resistance Army rebels for alleged war crimes, rather than see them indicted by an international tribunal, the government said on Wednesday.

Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, chief government negotiator at talks with the rebels, said he had carried out "extensive consultations" with Ugandans in the war-ravaged north, but gave no figures.

"Very many of them felt that Uganda by using traditional and formal justice systems, will provide a sufficient alternative to handle issues of accountability and reconciliation," he said.

Two decades of war in northern Uganda killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 1.7 million before peace talks in south Sudan began in July 2006, leading to a truce the following August that has been largely respected.

But the LRA has said it will never sign a final peace deal unless the International Criminal Court drops indictments against four top commanders for crimes such as killing civilians, slicing body parts off victims and kidnapping children.

The rebels have said they might accept local courts as an alternative to the Hague-based tribunal but are angered at what they say is the government's unwillingness to put its own soldiers accused of atrocities on trial.

In June, the Human Rights Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed 2,875 people in the north, 58 percent of whom wanted the LRA to be tried but with 76 percent saying they feared the ICC indictments would jeopardise peace.

Elders from the LRA's Acholi tribe want the rebels to undergo traditional reconciliation rituals to deal with crimes. But human rights groups argue such rituals would fail to dish out punishments fitting the alleged crimes, such as long jail terms.

Darfur: Rebel Group Seizes Sudanese Army Base

From Reuters

A Darfur rebel group said it seized control of a Sudanese army base in neighbouring Kordofan province on Wednesday.

Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Khalil Ibrahim told Reuters his forces and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction attacked the army base, some 200 kms (125 miles) from the border with Darfur and held by 1,700 soldiers.

Ibrahim said the attack was in retaliation for government attacks and bombardments in their areas in South Darfur state.

The attack will hinder peace talks due to begin in October. Previous similar attacks have provoked strong retaliation by the army during Darfur's 4-1/2 year conflict.

"This afternoon the JEM branch in North Kordofan and SLA Unity took Wad Banda, a strong army base," he said. A brigade of 1,200 soldiers and 500 central reserve police, a government militia, were based there and had fled the barracks.

"We have prisoners and have taken many vehicles... and ammunitions and weapons. We have small losses and injuries ourselves," he said.

Many rebels groups and commanders agreed a common negotiating platform earlier this month, and agreed to a truce if the government also agreed.

Both sides accuse the other of starting ongoing clashes in South Darfur state. JEM said it had downed a plane that had been bombing the area.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on Tuesday condemned the bombing as in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

A struggling African Union peacekeeping force cannot protect itself and has declared the area no-go because of clashes.

A joint U.N.-AU 26,000-strong peacekeeping mission will take over from the AU. British parliamentarians said they needed to use force if confronted to deter violence in Darfur.

"If they are seriously challenged they will have to respond ... it has to be with force," said Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Susan Kramer.

"The hybrid force will have to show that it's utterly determined and show that it will not tolerate attacks on the force or attacks on vulnerable people."

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the remote west. Khartoum mobilised militias to quell the revolt.

Darfur's conflict has spread across borders to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Presidents from both nations have accused Sudan of supporting rebels trying to overthrow their governments.

Late on Tuesday, CAR President Francois Bozize visited Khartoum in an apparent rapprochement.

"It's not in the interests of Sudan to disrupt the stability and security in your country or in any other country," said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir after the talks.

"We are totally convinced that we can bilaterally ensure a successful security and stability situation in the area more than any foreign forces," Bashir said.

A European Union force has been suggested to patrol the Chad-CAR-Sudan border to prevent cross-border attacks by armed groups.

ICC: Sudan Not Cooperating on Arrests

From the UN News Center

The Sudanese Government has not moved to arrest two suspects wanted to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said today, calling on Khartoum to cooperate immediately with the court.

In an interview with the UN News Centre, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that it is “totally unacceptable” that one of the two suspects, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, is currently Sudan’s Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs.

“He was coordinating actions to remove people from their own villages and push them into IDP [internally displaced person] camps, and now he… basically controls them,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said. “Harun is still in charge, effectively, of the same people. He is like the fox being in charge of the chickens.”

Unless the Government takes steps to arrest Mr. Harun and the other suspect, Janjaweed militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said he would inform the Security Council in his next progress report.

He said there had been no progress from Khartoum since it was informed of the arrests and its responsibilities.

“They have to remember, Sudan, that this issue is a part of their duties now that we have these global legal standards” enshrined in the ICC, said the Prosecutor. “The responsibility to execute the warrant is for the Government of Sudan,” and not for him or the ICC or the Security Council.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said his staff were trying to monitor the movements of the two suspects to determine their whereabouts, particularly now that an Interpol red notice – which allows the warrant to be circulated around the world with the request that the wanted person is arrested with a view to extradition – has been issued for Mr. Harun.

Mr. Harun and Mr. Kushayb are accused of targeting civilians in attacks on four villages in West Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004, according to their warrants, which outlines multiple counts of personal responsibility for murder, rape and pillaging for each man.

The ICC Prosecutor has been investigating war crimes committed in Darfur amid increasing international efforts to stop the bloodshed in the impoverished region and provide justice to victims of the violence and human rights violations.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least two million others forced to leave their homes in Darfur since 2003 because of fighting between rebel groups, Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, who is in New York this week, held talks today on Darfur and other issues, including the progress of cases in northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He also spoke on the same issues, and the need for greater cooperation between the UN and the ICC, with Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Affairs Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide Francis Deng and the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Margareta Wahlström.

Darfur: Peacekeepers Must Use Force

From Reuters

U.N. and African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur must respond with force if attacked by armed groups, British parliamentarians said on Wednesday.

The current 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur has failed to stem violence in the region despite a 2006 peace deal.

Western countries hope the joint peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops will bring an end to 4-1/2 years of conflict which has killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

"What the people are asking for is to make a difference on the ground," said MP David Drew, chair of the British parliamentary group on Sudan.

"Either they say okay we'll wait and push somewhere else or they really do take them on and they say sorry we're going to disarm you," he said.

Susan Kramer, a member of parliament for Richmond Park, said the force could not be a soft target.

"If they are seriously challenged they will have to respond ... it has to be with force," she said.

"The hybrid force will have to show that it's utterly determined and show that it will not tolerate attacks on the force or attacks on vulnerable people," she added.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the remote west. Khartoum mobilised militias to quell the revolt.

Ahead of peace talks due to begin in October, AU and U.N. mediators are trying to bring several different rebel groups to a unified platform. But Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) founder and chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur has refused to join the talks until international forces have secured Darfur.

Drew said France, who is hosting Nur, should advise him to either return to Darfur or go to the talks.

"If he's a serious player he hasn't got a more important time to be around than now," he said. "He ought to be doing something because just staying in Paris isn't helpful to anybody."

Darfur's conflict has spread across borders to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Presidents from both nations have accused Sudan of supporting rebels trying to overthrow their governments.

Late on Tuesday, CAR President Francois Bozize visited Khartoum in an apparent rapprochement. A European Union force has been suggested to patrol the Chad-CAR-Sudan border to prevent cross-border attacks by armed groups.

"It's not in the interests of Sudan to disrupt the stability and security in your country or in any other country," said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir after the talks.

"We are totally convinced that we can bilaterally ensure a successful security and stability situation in the area more than any foreign forces," Bashir said.

Darfur: Sudan Rejects Fighting Accusations

From AFP

Sudan has rejected allegations that it is still involved in fighting in Darfur, after it was accused of violating a UN arms embargo in the war-ravaged western region.

"These accusations are false and founded on made-up information from organizations and agencies with a political agenda," foreign ministry spokesman Ali Al Sadek said late Tuesday.

"The government hasn't had any military activities recently, and the Sudanese army has no activities in Darfur," he said.

London-based rights group Amnesty International last week said Sudan was continuing to defy a UN arms embargo, citing as evidence photographs of military equipment being delivered in July to Al Geneina airport in Darfur.

Sadek's declaration also came after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday voiced deep concern about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur.

"I am deeply concerned about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur that has caused the death of hundreds of people in the last few weeks, alone," he said.

Recent attacks, including the repeated bombardment of villages in southern Sudan, were "simply unacceptable," Ban said, announcing a visit to Darfur next week.

Sadek insisted that Khartoum was seeking stability in Darfur "the proof of which is that [the government] spared no effort to convince armed movements to reject violence."

UN: Conflict Prevention Efforts Faulted

From the AP

The United Nations spent $18 billion on peacekeeping missions around the globe in the past five years - mainly in Africa - but not enough on preventing conflicts from erupting in the first place.

That was a key conclusion of a daylong meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday which called for stepped up efforts to address the root causes of conflict. The open meeting, organized by the Republic of Congo, which hold the council presidency this month, focused especially on conflicts in Africa.

Namibia's U.N. deputy ambassdor Frieda Ithete said "about half of the world's armed conflicts and some three-quarters of the U.N. peacekeepers are in Africa."

"As we speak," she said, "there are over 6 million displaced people in the world, out of which approximately 3 million are in Africa."

Itheke underscored the need for greater investment in conflict prevention and establishment of an early warning system that would be "cost effective in saving lives and financial resources."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting that there has been a 40 percent decline in armed conflict around the world since the 1990s by some estimates, with recent research crediting U.N. peacemaking, peacekeeping and conflict prevention as a major factor, "but it is not good enough."

"Violent conflicts continue to inflict immense suffering on countless people, mostly civilians, around the world," he said, adding that more "investment in prevention could save us considerable pain and expense - in Darfur, in Somalia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in northern Uganda, in Western Sahara and elsewhere."

He called for improved mediation, a new focus on achieving political settlements, and new approaches to addressing the underlying causes of conflict.

But Ban also said the complexity of many of today's conflicts require that "prevention must go beyond mere diplomacy" to promoting tolerance of diversity within societies. This can require promoting human rights and the rule of law, helping organize elections and building democratic institutions, among other steps, he said.

China's deputy U.N. ambassador Liu Zhenmin noted that while the Security Council has often underscored its determination to prevent armed conflicts, its progress has been "less than satisfactory."

"In the past five years, the United Nations has spent more than $18 billion on peacekeeping operations," he said. "If more effective efforts had been carried out in the area of conflict prevention, much less would have been spent, and many more lives would have been saved from the scourge of conflicts."

Uganda: LRA May Face Home-Grown Tribunal

From The Christian Science Monitor

Sunlight streams through the wide leaves of banana trees onto Betty Angee, who has lived at a desolate camp for displaced civilians in northern Uganda since fleeing from the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels four years ago. Now she says she has the chance to go home.

Last week, the Ugandan government announced that it is beginning public meetings on how to design a national tribunal that will try LRA members accused of committing war crimes.

The proposed local courts may provide an alternative to extraditing members of the rebel army to face 33 International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The LRA has refused to sign any peace deal with the government unless the charges from the ICC are dropped.

Many Ugandan survivors of the war say local courts – similar to the ones created in Rwanda after their genocide – is not only necessary for peace, but would administer justice that would be acceptable to most Ugandans. They also worry that trying LRA members in the ICC will actually make the situation worse. For human rights activists, however, the local tribunals are seen as a soft alternative that may encourage impunity.

For 20 years, the LRA has waged a savage campaign for power, notorious for forcing women and children into its ranks and cutting off the facial features of their victims. Thousands of civilians have died as a result of the conflict. Nearly 2 million have been displaced and forced to live in bleak refugee camps. Finding a way to try them for war crimes has proven difficult.

"The essence of the system would be based on truth-telling," says Ruhakana Rugunda, Internal Affairs minister and chief government negotiator at peace talks in Juba, South Sudan. He says that the tribunal will include punitive justice, but also draw on forgiveness themes from a traditional ritual known as mato oput. The system requires that a murderer face relatives of the victim and admit his crime before both drink a bitter brew as an act of reconciliation.

If created, the tribunals will not handle crimes committed by the Ugandan government forces during their conflict with the LRA. Government forces fall under the jurisdiction of preexisting courts martial. Additionally, top leaders of the LRA who helped organize genocide will face trial in a UN court, while those guilty of lesser crimes will stand trial in the traditional courts.

"The majority of the people agree that the LRA should not go to The Hague. People want the LRA punished – but not in jail for a long time," says Foreign Affairs Minister Oryem Okello, who is key in the set-up of the tribunal. Victims have expressed more interest in a "symbolic punishment," according to Mr. Okello.

"If they are punished, it will only worsen the situation," says Ms. Angee from the displacement camp. She says that in order for victims and perpetrators to "easily live together," the rebels must be forgiven.

Okello says that the justice model will be comparable to the traditional gacaca courts used in neighboring Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. "All those who admit crimes, show remorse, ask forgiveness and pay reparations will benefit from the justice mechanism," Dr. Rugunda says.

Still, for many human rights groups, traditional justice would not be enough. "This can't be a slap on the wrist ... the national trials can't be used to shield the LRA from justice," says Elise Keppler, counsel with the International Justice Program at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Critics of local justice also are wary of the effectiveness of the seemingly simple mato oput ritual.

In response to groups that have decried a local tribunal as not harsh enough punishment, Rugunda stresses that the government does "not condone impunity."

"The ICC is supposed to only come in if the state is unwilling or incapable of handling the LRA itself," says Chris Dolan, director of the Kampala-based Refugee Law Project. "If the judicial process is vigorous enough, what's inadequate about it [the court] being in Uganda?"

Ms. Keppler worries that the special court will not satisfy international expectations. The Rome Statue of the ICC favors local prosecution, but only if it provides credible and fair prosecution with appropriate punishment.

Despite LRA leaders' calls for the ICC charges against them to be dropped, even with the local tribunals, the Ugandan government does not have the ability to unilaterally clear the indictments. And a sticking point in the tribunal creation process will be whether the government can actually detain the rebels in custody, a problem that led to the ICC's intervention.

Okello says that the public meetings about how to create the tribunals will last until the end of next month. A report will then be released in October that details the findings of the two-month-long consultations. At that point, the minister says the government will be closer to knowing what the alternative justice system will look like and when it will be set up.

"We would like to see them account for their crimes, but we are not obsessed with seeing them march off to a foreign prison," says Norbert Mao, lawyer and chairman of Gulu, one of the conflict's hardest-hit towns.

But he adds: "To think that the traditional system is enough would be to deceive ourselves."

Darfur: Ban Banks on Three-Point Plan

From DPA

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday pushed a three-point action plan to end the ethnic conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, starting with the deployment of a 26,000- strong peacekeeping operation.

Ban also said diplomacy and a political process involving the Sudanese government, combined with humanitarian and economic assistance to Darfur should contribute to ending the conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people since 2003.

Countries have promised more military and civilian personnel than needed for the so-called hybrid force of the United Nations and African Union, Ban said. But he said the real needs are logistics and air transportation, which have not been promised by troop contributing countries.

Ban will be in Sudan Monday through Thursday and then travel on to Chad and Libya, two neighbouring countries that have a bearing on the conflict in Darfur. His trip comes amid preparations to deploy the joint peacekeeping operation.

'I want to go and see for myself the very difficult conditions under which our forces will operate,' Ban told the UN Security Council, which held a one-day debate on conflict prevention in Africa.

'I also want to know first-hand the plight of those they (the UN peacekeepers) seek to help,' Ban said.

He warned that the trip is not about achieving breakthroughs in the conflict, but rather aimed at consolidating UN and African efforts to end the war between Khartoum-backed Arab militias and black African rebel forces. The two sides have signed a comprehensive peace agreement, but fighting has continued to break out between them.

Ban said he will impress on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to cooperate and support the deployment of the hybrid force and to respect agreements to support international relief workers, which assist Darfur's 4 million people who depend on aid to survive.

Khartoum has expelled in past days the leaders of three international relief organizations, including the US group Care.

He said political talks to end the ethnic conflict were 'well on track,' following Khartoum's agreement to attend negotiations with opposition leaders in Tanzania. Invitations were also to go out to some African countries and parties in the conflict so a full-fledged peace conference can take place 'by the end of summer.'

'The international community needs to help organize these efforts, working with the government of Sudan as well as the host of international aid agencies and NGOs working so heroically on the ground,' Ban said, urging support for the three-point plan.

'We live, as you all know, in a world of global problems, requiring collective responses,' he said. 'Darfur is no exception.'

He said Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi can contribute to the political process while the European Union will help by sending a peace force to eastern Chad and the Central African Republic. The UN Security Council has agreed to the EU deployment.

Darfur: Nur Needed for Peace, but Talks Will Proceed

From Reuters

Darfur's peace process needs rebel leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur's support, but his failure to participate will not halt talks to end the conflict in western Sudan, African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim said.

Nur has refused to join the ranks of Darfur rebel commanders and groups who agreed a joint position earlier this month in Tanzania, saying he wants international troops to disarm militias to secure the region before talks with the government.

"He is certainly needed in the peace process, but the peace process takes its own momentum and I would hope that Mr. Abdel Wahed becomes a part of that momentum," Salim told reporters on Tuesday after a week-long visit to Sudan.

"I can't see this peace process being stopped because the people of Darfur want peace. They are really tired to go through the agonies of what they are going through now," he added.

Nur commands few troops in Darfur, but enjoys huge support among the 2.5 million people who have fled their homes to camps in Darfur and across the border in Chad during 4-1/2 years of fighting.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the arid west. Khartoum mobilised militias, known locally as Janjaweed, to quell the revolt.

An AU-mediated 2006 peace deal was signed by only one of three negotiating factions, Nur's rival Minni Arcua Minnawi.

Salim said any final agreement reached in renewed peace talks needed to address Darfuris' demands that the militia be disarmed.

"Whatever agreement that arrives must ... address this issue. Without addressing this issue you will still have a lot of concern, a lot of insecurity in the area," he said.

He said the security situation in Darfur was "disturbing" with many complaints of insecurity and the spread of arms.

Salim added last year's Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), which he helped negotiate, was a fact of life and had to be counted. But he added it could be built upon.

"We are going to focus on issues of concern which have not been sufficiently addressed in the Darfur peace agreement," he said, giving the issue of compensation as an example.

The DPA gave just $30 million compensation to the Darfuris. Khartoum has since agreed to pay $100 million, but the victims say it's not enough and demand individual compensation.

Darfur: From Genocide to Anarchy

An op-ed by Alex de Waal and Julie Flint in The Washington Post

Imagine you are a U.S. Special Forces officer and you get a call: You are being posted to Darfur. Your job is to protect African villagers from marauding Arab horsemen and to show the Sudanese security chiefs that their bluff has been called -- at last, the international community is standing up to their evil schemes.

What can you expect? According to news reports, a sort of slow-motion Rwanda in the desert. What will you find on arrival? A reality that's complicated and messy. A Darfur that has more in common with Chad, southern Sudan and -- dare we say it? -- Somalia.

In Darfur today, knowing who is on which side is not straightforward. The savage counterinsurgency offensives, with their massacres and scorched earth, that Colin Powell called "genocide" in September 2004 had in fact largely concluded by the time Powell made that historic determination. This isn't a moral exculpation; it's simply a fact. It's also been a regular sequence in Sudan's recurrent wars over the past 25 years. Episodes of intense brutality and mass displacement are followed by longer periods of anarchic internecine fighting, ably exploited by the government.

Because the vanguard of government offensives is tribal paramilitaries -- well known to prefer soft civilian targets to hardened rebels -- the result of each offensive is a fractured and demoralized society in which every group is armed and most leaders cut opportunistic alliances to preserve their power bases. The warlords who prosper in this environment deal only in the currency of power, switching alliances as their calculus shifts.

For the past three years, Darfur has been descending into this murky world of tribes-in-arms and warlords who serve the highest bidder, with some community leaders of integrity trying to carve out localities of tranquility. Many Arab militias are talking to the rebels; many erstwhile rebel leaders have struck bargains with the regime, receiving high-sounding positions and nice villas in return for providing an adornment to the government's attempts to show a pluralistic facade.

While the script of many rights campaigners and activists has remained stuck in the groove of "genocide," Darfur faces something that can be just as deadly in the long term: anarchy. The government is a dictatorship, but its writ doesn't run beyond the first checkpoints outside the towns. The army has a fearsome arsenal, but two much-heralded offensives last year were smartly and bloodily annihilated by rebels. The air force is rarely used, except when targets of opportunity arise -- or the rebels have the army on the run. There have been no large-scale offensives by the government in 2007.

The Sudanese government relies on its Arab militias for a semblance of control, but increasingly these militias pursue their own agendas. The largest loss of life this year occurred in clashes between two Arab militias, most recently at the end of July, when 100 militia members and Arab civilians died. The other big ongoing crisis, and the major cause of more than 100,000 people being displaced this year, is a multisided conflict in Southern Darfur involving warring Arab militias; rebel commanders from the Sudan Liberation Army who are now allied with the government, though other commanders are fighting it; a militia drawn from West African immigrants; and a rebel commander from the Justice and Equality Movement who answers to no one but himself. Simple, it isn't.

What's keeping Darfurians alive in this dismal war of all against all is their own skill at survival and, in the camps for the displaced, an immense relief effort. For the past two years, mortality rates among people reached by international aid have been lower than they were before the war. That's a tremendous achievement -- though the annual "hungry season," now upon us, is showing a worrying decline in child nutrition.

But the very scale of the aid effort brings its own problems. Aid agency vehicles are a tempting prize for bandits and militia leaders in a land without law. During the height of the massacres, aid agencies were scarce and their neutrality was largely respected -- not least because the two sides' military focus was on one another. It is a different story today. And as the attacks on humanitarians increase, the relief agencies duly report that things are getting worse.

For them, it is true. For the people of Darfur, the story is more complicated. So, if you are dispatched to Darfur as a peacekeeper, best to wise up quickly. Leave that fortified camp, step out of that armored car and ask the Darfurian people: "Just what the hell is going on here?"

CAR/Chad: U.N. OKs Troops

From Reuters

The Security Council gave the European Union and the U.N. the green light Monday to prepare for a military and police deployment to help protect civilians in Chad and the Central African Republic caught in the spillover of the Darfur conflict.

A council statement expressed readiness to authorize an international operation for a year to protect refugees, internally displaced people and civilians at risk in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic, and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The EU would send troops and the United Nations would contribute police, though France and the U.S. have said the year-long deployment will likely be followed by a U.N. peacekeeping operation. An EU Council of Ministers meeting on Sept. 17 will make a final decision on deploying European Union troops.

The council's statement sends an important "message of concern for the seriousness of the humanitarian situation in Chad and the Central African Republic," said France's deputy U.N. Ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix.

Darfur's spillover into the northeast Central African Republic and eastern Chad "has had very serious humanitarian consequences _ more refugees, more displaced persons, and more insecurity for these refugees and displaced persons," he said.

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, whose country drafted the Security Council statement, said last week that there were 400,000 refugees and internally displaced people in Chad, and more than 200,000 displaced people in the northern Central African Republic.

Since the Security Council visited Darfur and Chad in June 2006, the U.N. has been discussing deploying international police and troops to the two impoverished countries.

Chadian President Idriss Deby opposed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's original proposal for the deployment of a U.N. military force, but agreed to an EU force after meeting with France's foreign minister in June.

The EU agreed last month to start planning for a possible 3,000-member peacekeeping mission.

Lacroix said the council statement sends a "political signal" of support, especially to the EU, to go ahead with planning for the deployment.

An EU-U.N. mission is visiting both countries, and he said the council's backing will be important for their recommendations to the EU Council of Ministers meeting.

France plans to follow up very soon with a resolution authorizing the EU force and the U.N. police mission and would like it adopted "as quickly as possible," Lacroix said.

Under a proposal from Ban, the U.N. would send up to 300 international police. He recommended that the Security Council "signal its intention to authorize" the proposed mission, which would allow for intensified coordination between the EU, U.N. and Chad.

Ripert said troops and police would be deployed at a dozen camps in Chad and at least one in northeastern Central African Republic.

Darfur: AU Envoy Faces Critics, Nur's People Want Talks

From Reuters

Thousands of Darfuris demonstrated angrily on Monday in Zalengei town to show African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim their despair over a peace process that has failed to bring security to western Sudan.

Salim travelled to Zalengei town as part of a tour of Darfur to get people's views on efforts to renew talks to end the 4-1/2 year war that has driven 2.5 million people from their homes.

Protests greeted him in the region which is the birthplace of rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) founder and chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur and hostile territory for the AU.

A breakaway group of protestors chased Salim's convoy from the airport to the town, brandishing sticks and knives. One sign read: "Abdel Wahed is brave, broadminded and true."

On a hilltop overlooking town, thousands of women formed a multi-coloured mass protest as Salim met with community leaders.

For more than a year, African Union peacekeepers have been unable to patrol the three camps surrounding Zalengei, mostly inhabited by Darfur's largest Fur tribe, because of opposition from the 150,000 people who fled their homes to makeshift camps surrounding the town.

Nur, who resides in Paris, and one other faction rejected a May 2006 AU-mediated peace deal, which Nur's rival Minni Arcua Minnawi signed.

None of the farmers driven from their homes to Zalengei during what U.N. officials have called a "scorched earth" campaign have read that deal. But they oppose it because Nur told them to.

Salim was head of mediation during Darfur peace talks that produced the 2006 agreement.

Salim and his U.N. counterpart, Jan Eliasson, are trying to regain the confidence of the 4.2 million people displaced by the conflict and reliant on aid, and convince all Darfur's population to back new talks.

Displaced Darfuris refused to meet Salim in the camps, but a few came to meet him in the town.

Despite the opposition Salim encountered, the message was mostly positive and clear. Residents want peace and security, and they want Nur to join a peace process that is expected to include talks with the government in the coming months.

"I call on Abdel Wahed to join the peace process," said Ibrahim Ahmed, from an environmental group in Darfur.

"He has to unify his position with the other factions. There should not be three sides but one to sit face to face with the government," he added.

Nur refused to attend a U.N. and AU-sponsored rebel unity meeting in Tanzania earlier this month where more than a dozen groups agreed on a common platform for peace talks.

He says he wants security and an effective international peacekeeping force on the ground before he will go to talks.

His supporters in Zalengei and the surrounding camps agree on security. But they said Nur should attend talks.

"We want the international forces to come and disarm the militias but at the same time we want Abdel Wahed to go to negotiate," said Omda Zacharia Yahya Jamous, a tribal leader from the Hassa Hissa camp outside Zalengei.

Many nodded in agreement.

Almost unanimously, the leaders gathered wanted individual compensation and disarmament of all armed groups, rebels and militias, so they could return to their villages in safety.

Khartoum mobilised mainly Arab militias to quell a revolt begun by mostly non-Arab rebels in 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the arid west. Experts estimate some 200,000 have died.

Zalengei's residents said only disarmament could resolve the conflict in Darfur.

"Now there are weapons in everyone's hands, even children," said Zalengei resident Hajja el-Senoussi. Her colleague next to her wiped tears from her eyes.

"In our homes at night we canot sleep for shooting. The children and elderly cannot rest in peace," Senoussi added.

Darfur: British Minister Urges China to Help

From Reuters

China should help resolve a humanitarian crisis in Darfur as one of a few "critical players," a British minister said on Tuesday, urging the world's most populous country to be more active in global diplomacy.

Lord Malloch-Brown, on the first visit to China by a British minister since Gordon Brown took up the premiership in June, said Beijing needed to transform itself into a "strong, multilateral player."

"Trying to move on Darfur without the active involvement of China was kind of like pushing a very big rock up an extremely steep mountain, you just couldn't do it," Malloch-Brown, Britain's minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, told reporters.

While Chinese companies control some of Sudan's largest oil blocks, human rights groups accuse China of giving Khartoum financial and military aid that enables it to wage war in the Darfur region that has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

Malloch-Brown plans to travel to Sudan in 10 days.

"I think that I go to Sudan on a much more powerful position having talked first to the authorities in Beijing, they are critical players in all of this," he added.

Despite a 2006 peace deal, some 7,000 African Union troops are struggling to keep the peace. Although large-scale fighting has largely ended, rebels and militias have fractured creating lawlessness and banditry.

Malloch-Brown suggested China should assume a bigger role alongside traditional powers like the United States in multilateral bodies such as the United Nations on issues like African development, Myanmar's political gridlock and denuclearization in North Korea.

"We want China to be a major player in the world, there is no alternative for the world but to have a responsible China sitting at the global table, helping to solve global issues."

China is beginning to flex its economic power globally -- setting up a new agency to invest its foreign reserves abroad. But the Chinese government was too timid on upholding human rights, Malloch-Brown said.

"The kind of world we want to see is one where human rights are respected universally, and an indispensable part to achieving that is that China is also willing to make that case at home and abroad."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, currently in Beijing, also urged China to press Sudan to help create peace in Darfur.

Uganda: LRA Hires Lawyers for Peace Talks/Otti Mocks ICC

From IWPR

Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, deputy commander, Vincent Otti, has appointed three lawyers to strengthen the group’s negotiating team at peace talks with the Ugandan government.

In a satellite phone interview with IWPR from the LRA's main base in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, Otti said the lawyers would handle questions raised by the decision of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague to put the LRA's leaders on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

“Their role shall be to beef up our negotiating team on how to handle the law and any criminality issues lined up against us as we carry on with the talks," said Otti.

The rebel commander said the Ugandan lawyers would deal specifically with the arrest warrants issued by the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

The warrants alleges that LRA chief Joseph Kony, his deputy, Otti, and commanders Okot Odiambo and Domenic Ogwen "engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements".

An arrest warrant was issued against a fifth man, Raska Lukwiya, but he was killed in fighting last year.

The charge sheet further alleges that Kony and his men abducted civilians, including children, who forcibly “recruited” as fighters, porters and sex slaves to serve the LRA.

Otti, who comes from Atiak, a small trading post in northwest Uganda, has denied committing any atrocities in the 21-year northern Ugandan war that has pitted the LRA against Uganda's armed forces.

He said he expected the government to go to The Hague to withdraw the arrest warrants against the four commanders, following the signing of an agreement by Ugandan government and LRA representatives at the peace talks held in Juba, the capital of autonomous south Sudan.

“Unfortunately, we are not seeing this. But we are committed to the peace talks,” he said.

The Ugandan government and LRA rebels signed a truce aimed at ending a 19-year conflict last year.

An agreement on accountability and reconciliation - the third item on the agenda at peace talks was signed in June. It concerns the possibility of using local justice mechanisms to prosecute those suspected of committing war crimes on both sides of the war.

“I am ready to face prosecution in Uganda," he told IWPR. "However, I am 100 per cent sure that I have not committed any crime at all.”

During the interview, Otti repeated his earlier arguments that the ICC arrest warrants against the LRA's top commanders represent a major stumbling block to the peace process. The moment the ICC arrest warrants are lifted, he said, the rebels will quickly move out of their guerrilla bases.

“As soon as they are removed, I will be on the move to Uganda immediately. I will go to my village, then to Gulu [northern Uganda's biggest town], then Kampala,” he said.

“If the ICC indictments are not lifted, we shall remain in the bush.”

The LRA fled to Garamba from their former bases in southern Sudan in late 2004.

Otti's resolve to return to Uganda via Atiak will likely send tremors of fear through the population of the settlement.

On April 20, 1995, an LRA force led by Otti mounted a major offensive against Atiak and defeated Ugandan government troops stationed there.

According to accounts by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, JRP, Otti's guerrillas rounded up hundreds of men, women and children and force-marched them to the banks of a nearby river. JRP, together with Ker Kwaro Acholi, the cultural institution representing the Acholi people of northern Uganda, has been conducting research to promote reconciliation through traditional methods after the conflict.

There they were separated into two groups, mainly according to their sex.

After being harangued for their alleged collaboration with the Ugandan government, witnesses interviewed by the JRP say Otti ordered his soldiers to open fire three times on a group of an estimated 300 civilian men and boys, who all died.

Otti is then said to have turned to the women and girls and remaining young boys and ordered them to applaud the LRA’s work. Before leaving, Otti and the guerrillas are said to have selected a number of girls to march with them to become LRA porters and "wives".

A female survivor of what has become known as the Atiak Massacre said, "They fired at the [300 selected] people first and then again for the second time to ensure that they are all dead… My first-born child, mother-in-law, father-in-law and my husband were all killed and I watched them die. I returned with four children whom I am struggling to take care of now."

Otti, in an earlier interview with IWPR, said he is even prepared to travel to The Hague to face charges at the ICC - on condition that the court’s prosecutors also indict government soldiers from the Uganda People's Defence Force, the UPDF.

"If the UPDF are included on the list of indicted commanders, I will definitely go to The Hague. Short of that, I will never go. It’s not only the LRA alone who committed atrocities in northern Uganda. It’s both the LRA and the UPDF. Why did the ICC indict us alone?” he said.

The 4920 square kilometre Garamba National Park, where Kony, Otti and the LRA's other top leaders have their guerrilla headquarters, is in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The LRA army fled there in late 2004 from their former bases in southern Sudan. The Garamba's vast grasslands, savannahs and forests are a UNESCO World Heritage site and form the last refuge in the wild of the critically endangered northern race of the African White Rhino.

The rhinos have been heavily poached by the LRA and other marauders. At the last count, only five of the animals remained, down from an estimated 1200 in 1960, meaning the species is almost certainly doomed to extinction.

Also from IWPR

The international justice system works to silence opponents of bad governments while exercising leniency and indulgence towards executive state presidents and prime ministers who themselves are suspected of committing war crimes, the leadership of Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, has alleged in an interview with IWPR.

“No government leader in power has been arrested or tried” in international tribunals, said LRA commander Vincent Otti, who himself is the target of an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the fledgling International Criminal Court, ICC, based in The Hague.

Speaking by satellite phone from the LRA’s guerrilla headquarters, deep in the bush of the 5000-square-kilometre Garamba National Park, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Otti told IWPR, “If this institution [the ICC] is really designed to try anybody suspected of crimes against humanity, then it should also be trying the Ugandan People’s Defence Force.”

The UPDF, the armed forces of the government of Uganda, and the LRA have been locked in a 21-year-long civil war in northern Uganda that has seen more than 100,000 people die, some 1.7 million people uprooted from their homes and made internal refugees, and an estimated 38,000 children aged as young as seven and eight years abducted by the rebels to serve as guerrilla fighters, porters and sex slaves.

“Thomas Lubanga was arrested because he was suspected of being a rebel, but if he had been the president of a country he would not be behind bars now in a European prison,” said Otti, who is deputy to the LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, leader of an ethnic Hema militia in the heavily-forested, mineral-rich Ituri region of the Congo, was placed in custody by the Congo government and transferred to an ICC prison in the capital of the Netherlands in March 2006. Proceedings against 46-year-old Lubanga are going forward with glacial speed. A preliminary hearing will be heard in The Hague only on September 4, eighteen months after Lubanga’s arrest: that hearing will deal only with pre-trial issues, and there is no clarity when a full trial will begin.

Lubanga is specifically charged with recruiting children under the age of fifteen to fight as guerrilla soldiers. In the five years of operation of the ICC, staffed by some 600 international civil servants, Lubanga is the only person the court has so far managed to arrest.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based international human rights organisation, has been pushing ICC prosecutors to investigate the involvement of the Ugandan and Rwandan governments in the Ituri conflict for several years, arguing that the various Ituri militias have been armed and financed by outside groups with an interest in the Congo’s mineral and forest wealth.

The LRA, which has been involved in peace talks with the Ugandan government for more than a year, has said it will not agree to a final settlement unless ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo withdraws indictments against Kony, Otti and other rebel leaders. Moreno-Ocampo’s 23-page charge sheet alleges that the LRA leaders "engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements".

The charge sheet further alleges that Kony and his men abducted civilians, including children, who were forcibly “recruited” as fighters, porters and sex slaves to serve the LRA.

Otti demonstrated his own confusion about who exactly in The Hague is issuing the warrant for his own arrest and that of others when he said, “If [Ugandan president Yoweri] Museveni left power today he would be arrested by the ICJ tomorrow.”

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations, and has operated in The Hague since 1946, resolving legal disputes between sovereign states, not between individuals. It is confused over and over again with the ICC - that began work only in 2002 and focuses on war crimes and crimes against humanity by individuals - and which seeks Otti’s arrest.

Otti alleged that Museveni would only ever face potential prosecution by an international court when he steps down from political power. “He will then find himself behind bars in The Hague to answer crimes against the people of Uganda who were killed in the Luwero Triangle when Museveni was a bush fighter, like us, fighting the then established government he overthrew,” said Otti.

Northern Ugandans allege that as far back as the Eighties, Museveni's then rebel group, the southern-dominated National Resistance Army, NRA, was responsible for human rights abuses during the war against the government of the then president Milton Obote. In Museveni’s 1981-86 guerrilla war, tens of thousands of people were killed in the Luwero Triangle, an area to the northwest of Kampala, the Ugandan capital, where NRA rebels were deeply entrenched.

The LRA revolt is in part the consequence of historic tensions between the ethnic Nilotic tribes of northern Uganda and the Bantu tribes of the south. Each has established national dominance at different times, often by force and sometimes through the ballot box.

In his interview with IWPR, Otti blamed the UPDF for the “Barlonyo massacre” of February 21, 2004, when LRA guerrillas were widely reported to have attacked an internal refugee camp of that name, near the northern town of Lira, and killed more than 300 people while abducting others and burning every building to the ground.

Otti claimed to IWPR that the Barlonyo attack was in fact carried out by Ugandan government soldiers, whose officers subsequently placed the blame on the LRA. “The UPDF,” he said, “has a habit of wearing rags and then hitting people in the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. Then they go and put their uniforms back on to put out UPDF propaganda [alleging LRA responsibility].”

However, Bosco Okello, who was present at the Barlonyo attack and was abducted as a young child that day by the LRA, recently escaped from the rebels and returned home. "I didn't know what to think when I first came back," said Bosco, now aged 16. On February 21, 2004, before he was taken away to an LRA camp, he helplessly watched the rebels execute his own brother. Okello is now trying to find work on construction projects to support his parents - neither of whom can walk because they were shot in the legs on that same date - and his younger brother and sister.

Before severing the satellite phone call from the Garamba, Otti warned that peace talks in Juba, South Sudan, between the Ugandan government and the LRA would fail if Museveni did not move quickly to demand that the court in The Hague drop its charges against the LRA.

He threw out a challenge to the ICC, which has no police force of its own, “to come and arrest me if it thinks it can do so”, and said terms used by Museveni such as “terrorists” to describe the LRA “are propaganda to intimidate the oppressed minority groups that are fighting for their rights”.

DRC: Rebel Ambush Kills 4 Soldiers

From Reuters

Four government soldiers were killed in eastern Congo by fighters loyal to a renegade general in the latest in a series of attacks threatening a fragile eight-month truce, the army said on Tuesday.

Security officials from Congo and its Great Lakes region neighbours, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, have been meeting in the Rwandan capital to discuss possible joint operations to stamp out rebel groups operating in Congo's mineral-rich east.

he soldiers were killed in an ambush on Monday at Matanda in Democratic Republic of Congo's lawless North Kivu province.

Congolese army commanders blamed the attack on soldiers loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, some of whose Tutsi fighters had integrated into mixed army brigades under a January truce brokered by neighbouring Rwanda.

Congo's army and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) -- at 17,000-strong, the largest in the world -- had sent patrols to the area around Matanda, located 40 km (25 miles) northwest of the provincial capital Goma.

"There were four killed on our side. I'm going to the site now with MONUC in order to verify the death toll," Col. Delphin Kahimbi, army operations commander for North Kivu, told Reuters.

Following the ambush, Congolese government troops during the night exchanged heavy weapons and machine-gun fire with rebel fighters at nearby Behambwe.

Nkunda had led a 2004 uprising in North Kivu to defend his Tutsi people in the volatile, racially mixed province, long a stronghold of militias, foreign and domestic rebels.

At least 165,000 civilians have fled fighting in North Kivu province since February, when Tutsi-commanded army brigades launched operations against the largely Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) guerrillas.

Following elections last year aimed at drawing a line under a 1998-2003 war that killed some 4 million people in Democratic Republic of Congo, President Joseph Kabila promised to bring peace to the east.

Nkunda accuses Kabila's government of abetting his enemies in the FDLR, which controls parts of North Kivu. The rebel group is composed in part of former Interahamwe militia who fled to Congo after taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Army commanders and U.N. officials fear recent unrest and desertions in the mixed army brigades in North Kivu threaten to plunge the troubled east back into war.

"We urge all parties to refrain from use of force and to go back to doing their job which is to protect the population," MONUC's spokeswoman in Goma, Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, said.

Darfur: Still a "Huge Humanitarian Crisis" Though Death Rate Declines

From the LA Times - via ENOUGH

Something remarkable happened this year at a clinic for malnourished infants in this West Darfur village: It ran out of patients.

And physicians at the Doctors Without Borders clinic haven't seen a single gunshot wound since last year. Now they're thinking about closing down because there is a hospital next door run by another aid agency, and a third center is under construction.

"It's getting a bit crowded here," said Sewnet Mekonnen, the clinic's field coordinator. "We're not seeing as many emergencies."

The clinic's situation highlights one positive trend lost in the barrage of grim news that continues to pour out of western Sudan: Fewer people are dying.

At the peak of the Darfur crisis three years ago, health experts estimated that 6,000 to 10,000 people were losing their lives each month to disease, hunger and violence. Today, thanks to a drop in violence and improved healthcare, that figure is estimated at 100 to 600 a month, based on United Nations mortality estimates, news reports and interviews with U.N. officials, aid workers and Western diplomats.

Exact figures are unknown because, even though the U.N. and the African Union have large missions in Darfur, no agency is officially keeping track of civilian deaths.

The U.N. informally collects reports of violence-related civilian deaths, but doesn't make the data public because it cannot verify their accuracy. However, U.N. officials did confirm a downward trend.

"Violence has subsided in the first part of 2007 and this definitely has affected the death toll," said Ali Hamati, the U.N. spokesman in El Fasher.

Those who have reviewed the U.N.'s weekly compilations say violence-related casualties this year have averaged 100 to 200 a month, with the largest number of recent deaths arising from inter-tribal clashes in southern Darfur. Overall, civilian casualties in Darfur were down 70% in the first half of 2007, compared with the same period last year, U.N. figures indicate.

Officials emphasized, however, that even with the drop in fatalities, violence and insecurity in Darfur remain a problem.

"Harassment is still going on, rape is still going on, attacks are still going on," said Annette Rehrl, spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "But the killing is not on the large scale that we saw before."

Since the Darfur rebellion erupted in 2003, about 200,000 people are believed to have died, mostly of disease and hunger, though the Sudanese government says the death toll is 5,000. Some Darfur activists estimate that as many as 450,000 people have died.

Sudan's military regime, dominated by Sudanese Arabs, is accused of responding to the rebellion by arming nomadic militias, called janjaweed, to attack and pillage villages supporting rebels, many of whom increasingly call themselves "Africans." To date, about 2.5 million people have been displaced.

Some attribute the recent reduction in deadly violence to the growing international pressure on the Sudanese government and to the splintering of the rebel movement into rival factions, resulting in fewer clashes with government troops. Others see a change in tactics by janjaweed, shifting from large-scale massacres to other forms of intimidation.

"It's like they are getting smarter," said Gry Tangstad, a U.N. human rights worker in El Fasher, state capital of North Darfur. "They're still attacking, but often they are just scaring people or preventing them from their livelihoods. We're not seeing entire burned-out villages like we did in 2004."

In one North Darfur village, for example, janjaweed cut off access to the water source in July, forcing residents to move to a displacement camp without firing a shot. In another incident last month, militiamen burned down two huts and killed two people in the village of Hajar, but were able to loot the entire village because hundreds of residents immediately fled, according to a U.N. report.

Such quick escapes are another reason for a decrease in the number of deaths, experts said.

"People are moving at the first sign of trouble, and as a result, not losing their lives in the same number," said Fleur Auzimour Just, a program advisor at Care International in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

Rape is increasingly used as "a weapon of war to cause humiliation and instill fear," said the Office for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

A recent report by the agency mentions 50 women in Deribat, South Darfur, who were raped and some held as sex slaves for a month by armed bands, allegedly supported by government troops, who attacked their town in December 2006.

However, the overall decline in violence has led some aid officials and diplomats to raise questions about whether the conflict should still be characterized as genocide, a position held by the U.S. government and several international activist groups.

"The idea that thousands are still being killed by janjaweed is a myth," said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public comments. "The genocide happened. And it ended. To say otherwise is obscuring the reality of Darfur."

Darfur activist Eric Reeves, an English professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, agreed that fatalities probably are at the lowest level since the conflict started, but said that conditions remained tense and fatalities could increase quickly if fighting resumes or humanitarian groups withdraw.

Reeves said civilian deaths had declined, in part, because many people in Darfur are living in displacement camps. "There just aren't that many villages left to attack," he said, calling the current environment "genocide by attrition."

Another major factor has been the aggressive international humanitarian campaign led by the U.N., involving more than 12,000 workers at a cost of nearly $700 million annually.

Since 2005, key indicators, including mortality and malnutrition rates, have been improving steadily. Today those rates are not only below thresholds commonly used internationally to define an "emergency," but in some cases, they are better than before the conflict, or better than those observed in other parts of Sudan and Africa.

"There is very little malnutrition and very little disease," said Mike McDonagh, the north Sudan manager for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We very quickly got it turned around."

Malnutrition rates in Darfur have been reduced by almost half since 2004 to 12.9%, according to U.N. figures. The "emergency" threshold is 15%.

The mortality rate for Darfur is about 0.35 deaths daily per 10,000 people, according to the latest available U.N. estimates -- about one-eighth of the 2.9 rate seen in some areas in 2003 and 2004, and well below the 1.0 "emergency" threshold.

In fact, the mortality rate in Darfur is near, or perhaps even below, the region's pre-conflict level. In sub-Saharan Africa, 0.44 deaths daily per 10,000 people is a common baseline.

"People in Darfur are now getting better healthcare than people in other parts of Sudan, such as the east and central regions," said El Tayeb Ahmed, a Sudanese physician with Doctors Without Borders in Habillah.

Aid workers, however, warned that such progress does not mean the Darfur crisis is "fixed."

An estimated 4.2 million people remain dependent on humanitarian aid. An additional 200,000 Darfur residents have been displaced since January. And health indicators are vulnerable to sudden changes. Aid groups recently began reporting an increase in moderate malnutrition in parts of West Darfur.

Meanwhile, violence has spread to neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic, where the aid presence is smaller and populations are more vulnerable than in western Sudan.

"It's still a huge humanitarian crisis," said Iain Hill, head of the U.N. refugee agency's office in Geneina, West Darfur.

Darfur: Sudan Orders US Charity Worker to Leave

From Reuters

Sudan has expelled the top official in Sudan of the US-based aid group CARE, the director says.

Country director Paul Barker said the Sudanese government's Humanitarian Aid Commission had given him 72 hours to leave the country, without giving reasons for the decision.

Barker is the third prominent foreigner expelled from Sudan in less than a week. Last Thursday Sudan told diplomats from Canada and the European Union to leave but it later allowed the EU ambassador to stay until his term expires next month.

Officials were not available to comment at the commission, the government body that monitors humanitarian work. But copies of its 72-hour order to Barker were printed in local papers.

"I am in the process of being expelled. I'll be here for another 12 hours," said Barker, a US citizen.

"This has come as a huge surprise to us. I am very disappointed with the government's decision, which I believe was based on information that was taken out of context. I am still hopeful though, as there are appeals being made."

Barker said the director of the Humanitarian Aid Commission called him in on Saturday. "He told me he had a letter from the highest levels of government saying that they could not renew my work permit and that I had to leave in 72 hours. He told me it was somebody in security but would not be more specific."

Barker said the only explanation he could think of was that the government was unhappy with an internal email which he had written to CARE staff in October and which was leaked to the Sudanese press earlier this year.

"It was an email about the security of CARE staff, setting out various scenarios for what might happen in (the western region of) Darfur," said Barker, 53, who comes from Oregon.

"It was a totally appropriate email for a country director to write. But the government saw it as political analysis that was inappropriate for an aid organisation to make," he added.

Aid workers from other aid agencies who did not want to be named said the expulsion came at a time of growing tension between humanitarian officials and the government of Sudan.

In the cases of the two diplomats last week, state radio quoted the Sudanese Foreign Ministry as saying they had interfered in the internal affairs of the country.

Barker said CARE had spent more than $US184 million ($A222.29 million) on aid projects in Sudan since it arrived in the country in 1979. It has spent more than $US60 million ($A72.49 million) in the past three years, he added, mostly in the troubled Darfur region.

"We have been in Sudan through thick and thin, through some very difficult times. It is very important that this doesn't impact on our work in Sudan," he added.

Darfur: Betrayed Again

The latest from Eric Reeves

Bending to the will of Khartoum’s brutal National Islamic Front (National Congress Party) regime, African Union leaders are engaged in a process of eviscerating whatever potential may have existed for the force authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1769 (July 31, 2007). As it did in defying UN Security Council Resolution 1706 (August 31, 2006), Khartoum has apparently ensured that any force deploying to Darfur will be little more than an enlarged version of the present African Union mission in Darfur, known as AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan). We are seeing, in short, an updated version of the “African Union-Plus,” first proposed following the rapid collapse of international support for Resolution 1706. Leading the way in abandoning any commitment to the UN resolution was Jan Pronk, then-Secretary General Kofi Annan’s incompetent special representative for Sudan. Out of Pronk’s insistence that the only option was augmenting the AU, the notion of an “African Union-Plus” was born, leading by a tortuous diplomatic path to the misconceived and ominously unprecedented AU/UN “hybrid” force, first promulgated at a “High Level Consultation on the Situation in Darfur” (Addis Ababa, November 2006).

This AU/UN “hybrid” force will inherit nearly all the weaknesses of AMIS and relatively few of the strengths that might have come from a true UN operation. Key command-and-control issues have yet to be resolved and are already creating embarrassing problems around the appointment of the deputy commander for this unprecedented combined force. Troubling issues regarding training, equipment, inter-operability (the cohesion of units from different countries and military traditions), critical skills sets, and the overall qualifications of potential troops and civilian police have been highlighted by a number of informed commentators.

The crisis of military capability emerged fully in a politically expedient announcement by African Union Commissioner Alpha Oumar Konaré: “I can confirm today that we have received sufficient commitments from African countries that we will not have to resort to non-African forces” (Associated Press [dateline: Khartoum], August 12, 2007). This announcement came in the immediate wake of a meeting between Konaré and National Islamic Front (National Congress Party) President Omar al-Bashir, and no doubt was tailored to please al-Bashir and his brutal security cabal. But by excluding non-African forces from the mission, Konaré has effectively denied this embryonic force the personnel whose skills are critical to any truly successful effort to protect civilians and humanitarians. In light of this statement, it becomes much more unlikely that non-African countries will volunteer their personnel---and much more likely that any such offers will be rejected by Khartoum on the basis of Konaré’s preemptive announcement.

This is the price Konaré and others in the African Union are willing to pay to avoid a confrontation with Khartoum and the risk of creating within the AU a split among Saharan and sub-Saharan African countries. In short, with visions of personal grandeur attendant, Konaré has decided that the political preservation of the AU, as he sees it, is more important than providing adequate protection to the people of Darfur. Despite the conspicuous inability of the AU to provide remotely adequate force levels for its current mission in Somalia, or even to reach previously authorized force levels for the current Darfur mission, Konaré has declared that for the massive “hybrid” mission in Darfur (26,000 troops and civilian police, as well as a substantial civilian component), the AU “will not have to resort to non-African forces.” This has been greeted with universal skepticism by military experts, as well as policy and human rights groups. Even African nations are publicly demurring. Darfuris in particular, both within the rebel movements and among the civilian populations in camps for Internally Displaced Persons and refugees, are adamant about the need for Western forces; their disillusionment with the African Union can hardly be overstated, even as their voices and demands are so rarely considered.

Darfur: Peacekeeping Force Has 'Unprecedented' Mission

From the Washington Post

A hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for the Darfur region of Sudan has received sufficient pledges for participation, though critical needs remain for technical support and an engineer corps, a top U.N. official said.

"It is unprecedented what we are trying to do here," Jane Holl Lute, the U.N. assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, said about the coordination between the African Union and the United Nations.

But "the political process is the heart of the peacekeeping mission. It can only walk alongside the process, not substitute it," she said.

Lute, an American, said the headquarters for the 31,000-member force would be operational in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, by the first week of October.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003, when the Sudanese government responded to a rebellion with indiscriminate killings and by unleashing militias, human rights groups say. As many as 450,000 people have died from violence and disease and 2.5 million have fled their homes, international experts say.

Sudan recently agreed to the deployment of a joint U.N.-A.U. peacekeeping entity, which will absorb a 7,000-member A.U. force that has failed to stop the violence. Lute is in charge of getting the force on the ground by the end of the year.

Lute, who traveled to Darfur in July, cited enormous operational challenges. The desert terrain is daunting, and sandstorms are frequent. El Fasher is 125 miles from the nearest port, which means massive equipment will have to be transported overland. Roads must be built. Commercial companies will handle the construction of camp sites and the foundations for water and fuel storage, she said.

Roving bands operate in the vast, lawless areas of Darfur. "Our mission is critical for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Even among these opportunists, these are people who want to kill, not who want to die. When they see a supreme force come in, they will find an alternative path," she said.

On the positive side, Lute said, supplies blocked at the harbor in Khartoum have been released for unloading. "Things have been flowing more smoothly than they have been in the past. Hundreds of containers caught up in the port of Khartoum have started to move since July," she said.

Most of the participants in the force will come from African countries. Other countries, including India, Bangladesh and Nepal, are contributing logistical units, and China is providing engineering units. About 19,500 soldiers will be armed.

Lute estimated that the annual cost of the force would be $2.4 billion to $2.6 billion. The United States is to fund about a quarter of the costs. Lute spoke in Washington, where she met Friday with officials at the National Security Council before returning to New York.

Peacekeepers serving in the many U.N. missions around the world have been accused of misconduct, including sexual abuse. Lute said she was "focused on the fact that the United Nations has been under scrutiny for misbehavior of its troops. We are being held to the highest standards, and we do have soldiers who behave badly."

Before deploying to Darfur, the peacekeepers will participate in special training programs to prevent such incidents and for maintaining a disciplined and orderly force, she said.

The forces will also be trained to deal with the "outrageous acts of sexual violence" by militias against women who venture outside displacement camps to collect firewood.

"Rape is a weapon of war, and it is used for intimidation and subjugation. We are working on a victims' assistance policy and strategy," she said. "Peacekeepers have to soldier their way back to zero tolerance of such acts."

Darfur: I Am A Witness to Suffering

An op-ed by Mia farrow in The Independent

My first visit to Darfur was in 2004. It changed the way I needed to live my life. I have just returned from my seventh trip to the region. I don't think I have the words to adequately represent what I have seen and heard there.

Incomprehensibly, it has now been more than four years since the killing began. Some experts believe half a million human beings have died thus far. Others bicker about the exact death toll - as if it makes a shred of difference to how we must respond.

Only the perpetrators dispute that hundreds of thousands of innocent men women and children have been killed, in ways that cannot be imagined or described. It is all the more appalling that we cannot know - that no one is yet able to count the dead. And the dying continues.

We can, however, know with certainty that more than four million people are dependent on food aid because their homes, villages, and the fields that sustained them, are ashes now. We also know that two and a half million human beings are struggling to exist amid deplorable conditions in squalid camps across Darfur and eastern Chad. I am a witness to their suffering.

The stories of those who survived the attacks are numbingly similar. Without warning, Antonov bombers and attack helicopters filled the morning skies and rained bombs upon homes and families as they slept, as they played, as they prayed, as they tended their fields. Those who could run tried to gather their children and fled in all directions.

Then the Janjaweed - government-backed Arab militia - attacked on horseback and on camels (and more recently in vehicles). They came shouting racial epithets and shooting. They shot the children as they ran, they shot the elderly.

I spoke to mothers whose babies were shot from their backs, or torn from their arms and bayoneted before their eyes, whose children were tossed into bonfires. I met men whose eyes were gouged out with knives. Strong women in frail voices described their gang rapes; some were abducted and assaulted continuously over many weeks.

"No one came to help me," they said, as they showed me the brandings carved into their bodies, and tendons sliced and how they hobble now.

"Tell people what is happening here" implored one victim, Halima. Three of her five children had been killed. "Tell them we will all die. Tell them we need help." I promised her I would do my best to tell the world what is happening there. In the years since 2004, over and over and over, in camp after camp, and deep in my heart I have made this promise.

In October, I will return to the region. People will tell me their stories and again will ask for protection. I will listen, I will take more photographs, and I will keep trying to tell the world what is happening there. The people of Darfur continue to plead for protection, and still no one has come. What does this say about us?

Darfur: AU Envoy Salim Urges Rebel Parties to Join Talks

From Reuters

African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim, seeking support from west Sudan's Darfuris for a ceasefire and peace talks, had a stormy reception when he met community and tribal leaders on Sunday.

Some of those Salim met at the African Union base in the town of el-Geneina walked out, accusing him angrily of favouring others.

Salim was meeting leaders of the millions who have fled their homes during 4-1/2 years of conflict and live in miserable camps across Darfur -- university professors, community workers and lawyers -- and asking them how best to tackle peace talks due in October.

"We want to listen to you," was Salim's message as he missed a formal lunch to demonstrate his commitment to hearing their points of view.

Salim and his U.N. counterpart, Jan Eliasson, are trying to regain the confidence of the 4.2 million people displaced by the conflict and reliant on aid, and get all Darfur's population involved in the new talks.

Salim was head of mediation during Darfur peace talks which lasted almost two years and resulted in an imperfect deal which only one of three rebel negotiating factions signed last year.

After six hours' flying, and facing a 6 p.m. curfew at Darfur's main airport in el-Fasher, Salim spent more than two hours talking to civil society and camp leaders, angering Arab tribal leaders who were then told they had only five minutes of his time.

"You spend weeks and months ... talking to the armed groups ... but for us you have only five minutes," said Mohamed Salih al-Amin Baraka, spokesman for the nomadic Arab tribes.

"Either you give us the full time allocated to us or we will just leave," he said, supported by angry snorts of agreement from other Arab leaders.

Those who rebelled against Khartoum in early 2003, accusing it of marginalising remote Darfur, were mostly non-Arabs. Those who answered the government's call for popular defence by forming militias to quell the revolt were mostly Arab tribes.

The rebels negotiated with the government, but since last year's deal they have split into more than a dozen factions, complicating new talks. The Arab militias had no seat at the talks and feel left out of the political process.

Salim got a better reception from civil society leaders, who showed their discontent with the armed groups.

Community worker Lena Fatha Rahman said civil society, as well as rebels, should have seats at talks. "Why do we only give seats to those who take up arms? This means any employee will take up arms to get what he wants from his employer," she said.

Izzeldin Adam Abdel Rahman from Mornei Camp said: "We must pressure the government and those who have not signed the deal ... to come to peace talks ... But the first priority is to disarm all armed groups."

On Monday Salim will travel to Zalengei, birthplace of the hugely influential founder and chairman of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur.

Nur has refused to join the rebel commanders and factions returning to the negotiating table until an international U.N.-African Union force is sent to Darfur to put an end to rape, killing and looting.

But Salim said talks were the only way to achieve that and urged Nur, living in Paris, to come to the negotiating table.

"I accept Abdel Wahed's position," he said. "(But) what I don't accept is to say that unless we have absolute security it is not worth it, because at the end of the day it is the negotiations which will ensure durable security."

Nur has few loyal troops in Darfur but massive support among the largest Fur tribe. Hundreds of thousands say they will only accept a deal that he has signed.

Darfur: US Delegation Says Refugees Experiencing Slow-Motion Genocide

From VOA

A delegation of U.S. advocates for Darfur says Friday that conditions in refugee camps in Sudan and Chad are appalling and that the population in Darfur continues to suffer a genocide by attrition in those camps. From VOA's New York Bureau, Mona Ghuneim reports.

The advocates recently returned from Chad where they saw first-hand what they called the deplorable condition of refugees suffering from sickness, malnutrition, trauma and inadequate supplies. They say the genocide is continuing in slow motion.

Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, an international development organization, says that by refusing to allow international peacekeepers into Darfur and not abiding to ceasefire commitments, the Sudanese government is still perpetuating the genocide.

The refugees cannot go home and she says this keeps them in the camps where they are suffering. She says that in her conversations with refugees, they asked her to take a message back to the United States. "You have to go back and tell our story and be sure that the rebel groups that are meeting get together, that the rebel groups sit down with the government, that the western powers do whatever they can to bring a peacekeeping force, and then peace, so that we can go back home," she said.

Messinger, a former president of New York's City Council, says the refugees feel abandoned and worry that talks between Sudan and western nations will not address their issues. She says the camps are becoming increasingly permanent and lack necessary resources. "They are faced with a crisis of unknown proportions, unknown length. They are trying to provide with inadequate dollars and they are really faced with making decisions on a daily basis. How long are people going to be here?," she said.

American actress Mia Farrow traveled with the group in her role as a United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, Goodwill Ambassador. Farrow, who has actively campaigned on behalf of refugees in Darfur, says it is unacceptable that people who managed to flee deadly attacks might die in camps set up to save lives. She says security conditions are unsafe and the refugees and aid workers are at risk everyday. "We became part of the picture when our vehicle was hijacked by armed men who entered the camp when we left at curfew. When the aid workers leave, what happens to the women and children? And it is overwhelmingly women and children in the camps," she said.

The advocates spoke at a media conference in New York aimed at calling attention to the American people about the camps' conditions. They say the Darfur refugees will die a protracted death if the international community does not act swiftly and vigorously.

Darfur: UN Official Says Sudan Is Cooperating

From the AP

The Sudanese government, which fought efforts to bring international peacekeepers to the devastated Darfur region, seems to be cooperating as the United Nations-mandated force takes shape, a top U.N. official said Friday.

Goods that had been bottled up at Sudanese ports began moving more freely in July, and there have been other signs of cooperation "for the moment," said Jane Holl Lute, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping worldwide.

She declined to speculate on the motivations of the Arab-led government in Khartoum, which the United States and others blame for allowing and encouraging much of the killing of Africans and the destruction of their farms and villages in Darfur.

Lute would not go so far as to say she is fully satisfied with Khartoum's role now, nor confident that cooperation will continue.

Her U.N. planners are "able to work," Lute said.

Lute was in Washington to update the White House on progress toward fielding the force of more than 20,000 early next year. The United States is not providing troops but is expected to fund about a quarter of the mission's projected $2.4 billion annual cost.

The U.N. needs additional help with engineering projects including roadbuilding and transporting goods and troops by air. Lute was discussing U.N. hopes for more practical help from the United States, although she said she was not on a lobbying mission.

The Sudanese government is adamantly opposed to non-Africans playing any major role in the hybrid U.N.-African Union operation that was authorized by the U.N. Security Council on July 31 and will be made up of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police.

Darfur: A Rebel Leader's Long Game

From the BBC

When I first met Darfur rebel leader Abdul Wahid al-Nur he was sitting with a group of supporters in the courtyard of a state run hotel in the Eritrean capital Asmara.

It was the summer of 2003 and the Darfur crisis had just burst to international prominence.

Eritrea's capital was the place to be for rebels from Sudan's south, east and west.

Eritrean policy then was basically to help anyone committed to overthrowing the neighbouring government in Sudan.

Abdul Wahid was hardly inspirational. He rambled when interviewed and seemed totally unprepared for his new role at the centre of an international crisis.

It was just a few weeks later that the United States called the violence in Sudan's far west a genocide.

Four years have now passed, during which I spent most of my time in Sudan covering Darfur.

Endless mediation

But my second meeting with Abdul Wahid was in the French capital Paris.

A text message when I arrived at the Gare du Nord specified the name of the tourist cafe where we were to meet.

Security is understandably a concern - Abdul Wahid's brand of leadership has won him few friends outside Darfur.

Physically he has changed little - he still appears younger than his 39 years.

With a round build he looks more restaurateur than rebel leader.

Abdul Wahid's English has improved immeasurably - thanks no doubt to the endless rounds of mediation he has participated in.

Seven rounds of talks culminated in last year's Darfur Peace Agreement.

In a defining moment and despite huge pressure from western countries Abdul Wahid refused to sign.

At the time furious diplomats said he had made a huge mistake and that they would now treat him as a terrorist and an outlaw.

But 15 months on Abdul Wahid looks like the only person who saw the Darfur Peace Agreement for what it was - a mess.

The only rebel leader who signed - Minni Minnawi - now sits marginalised and miserable in the annex of Khartoum's presidential palace.

In theory the most powerful man in Darfur, he has been successfully neutered by the ruling elite surrounding President Omar al-Bashir.

The Janjaweed militia who perpetrated Darfur's worst atrocities show little sign of being disarmed so few displaced people feel safe enough to go home.

Abdul Wahid remained in Eritrea much longer than I did - finally fleeing in November 2006.

A rapprochement between Khartoum and Asmara had left him vulnerable.

He was under pressure to join a new coalition of rebel groups that Eritrea was promoting as a precursor to talks.

Few of Darfur's multitude of rebel factions have much credibility with Abdul Wahid - he dismisses most of them as being in the pay of Khartoum saying "one person with three mobiles and some cars is not a rebel movement."

Paris is Abdul Wahid's new home - though he refuses to say what his exact living arrangements are.

If his office is anything to go by he is not slumming it - a high ceilinged suite of rooms replete with ornate furnishing, gilded mirrors from floor to roof and a view out onto one of Paris' most popular tourist attractions.

It is a long way from the dusty Darfur town of Zalingei where he was born.

"A helpful friend" was lending it to him, was all he would say.

Though few commanders in Darfur now declare their first loyalty to be to Abdul Wahid, his continuing influence is founded on his popularity with the victims of Darfur's conflict.

When he rejected the 2006 peace agreement, hundreds of thousands of Darfuris dismissed it outright - most before they had even heard the details.

After many tried to pretend he did not matter, Abdul Wahid is now belatedly seen as the key to any future peace deal.

A conveyor belt of African leaders and international diplomats have visited him in Paris to try and persuade him to attend talks.

So far they have had little success.

At a recent African Union/United Nations (AU/UN) meeting in Tanzania designed to unite Darfur's many rebel factions a chair was pointedly left empty with Abdul Wahid's name tag in front of it.

"We have tried before to do security concerns and a political process at the same time as parallel processes. That failed," he tells me, mopping the sweat off his forehead.

"We need the security of our people first and then we can go to the next steps."

For Abdul Wahid that means no talks before the 20,000 strong AU/UN hybrid force arrives, and that is likely to be spring 2008 at the earliest.

When and if he makes it to talks - Abdul Wahid has a far reaching, some might say impossible, negotiating position.

Not content with improving the lot of his fellow Darfuris, he sees his rebel organisation - the Sudan Liberation Movement - as a national one with the goal of transforming Sudan from an Islamist dominated state into a secular democracy.

"I want to be the president of my country - and this is my right and the right of my people. But I will not become president on the bones of my people.", he said.

Abdul Wahid has been called many things, but no-one has ever accused him of lacking ambition.

Chad: EU Prepares for Mission

From the Financial Times

European Union and United Nations military planners were headed to Chad this weekend to prepare for an ambitious new intervention to save civilians from rampant insecurity in one of Africa's most volatile regions.

Under a UN blueprint proposed earlier this month, 2,500 European soldiers, backed by 300 UN police, would aim to restore the rule of law, protect 240,000 refugees fleeing violence from across the border in Sudan's Darfur region, and safeguard the 170,000 people displaced locally by ethnic and political clashes.

They would also be posted to the north eastern corner of the Central African Republic, in an attempt to quell unrest in what has become a triangle of insecurity straddling three countries.

The UN Security Council is expected to give its preliminary blessing to the force on Monday, ahead of a meeting of Europe's foreign ministers in September.

The military component will primarily be French, but is likely to include other nationalities – possibly Poles or Scandinavians. The UN will send civilian officials as well as an international police unit, which will train a new Chadian police force of about 800.

The multi-faceted force was proposed after President Idriss Déby rejected earlier proposals for a fully-fledged UN force.

Paris' new foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, negotiated the deployment of European troops in June.

The move is being touted as part of a more assertive French foreign policy under Mr Kouchner, a former humanitarian worker, as well as a significant new step for Europe's fledgling security and defence policy.

Assuming the force goes ahead, 2008 will see UN or UN-mandated missions established in most of countries in eastern and central Africa.

By next year a 26,000 UN-African Union "hybrid" force should be deployed to Darfur, to stem huge human rights atrocities.

An AU force is attempting to establish itself in Somalia, where the UN is backing the transitional government against a Union of Islamic Courts. A UN force is monitoring the border between Ethiopian and Eritrea, amid failed international efforts to delineate the boundary.

The world's largest UN mission is attempting to restore stability to the Democratic Republic of Congo, while other missions are overseeing southern Sudan and Burundi. It is an unprecedented undertaking.

However, French and UN officials concede there are serious questions surrounding the long-term strategy of the Chad force.

The current plan is for the Europeans to stay 12 months, and for the UN to take over thereafter. But it is far from clear that Chad would accept that handover, and it could prove politically difficult for Europe to leave a vacuum.

Darfur: New Photos Expose Arms Violations

From Amnesty International

New photo evidence shows that the Sudanese government is continuing to deploy offensive military equipment in Darfur, despite the UN arms embargo and peace agreements.

Amnesty International (AI) today released new photographs that show Sudan's breathtaking defiance of the arms embargo and the Darfur peace deals.

"Once again Amnesty International calls on the UN Security Council to act decisively to ensure the embargo is effectively enforced, including by the placement of UN observers at all ports of entry in Sudan and Darfur," said Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s Arms Control Research Manager.

The photographs, sent to AI and the International Peace Information Service by eyewitnesses in Darfur, reinforce evidence provided in AI's May 2007 report: “Sudan: Arms continuing to fuel serious human rights violations in Darfur”. The photos were taken in July at El Geneina airport in Darfur.

AI has received reports of helicopters delivering arms to militias allied to the government, and of the continued deployment of attack helicopters. Russia signed a deal to supply at least 15 general military helicopters (Mi-17s) during 2005 and 2006 and also supplied 12 attack helicopters (Mi-24s) in 2005.

The Sudanese government continues to launch aerial attacks on civilians in Darfur. China supplied air to ground jets to Sudan until 2006.

In South Darfur, a Sudanese government Antonov aircraft carried out bombing raids in August after an attack by one armed opposition movement on the town of Adila. They targeted villages and water points. There have been a number of Antonov raids on Ta’alba, while the villages of Habib Suleiman and Fataha were also bombed. An Antonov capable of such raids was reportedly transferred from Russia to Sudan in September 2006.

Thousands of displaced villagers have fled the Jebel Moon/Sirba area in West Darfur after attacks byJanjawid-supported government forces on areas under control of armed opposition groups. Local people said the forces were supplied by helicopters.

There is further concern at reports that armed Sudanese border intelligence guards at El Geneina are using militarized vehicles in civilian settlements. Many in the border intelligence have come from the Janjawid militia, with little done to exclude those responsible for serious human rights violations.

The proliferation of small arms and militarized vehicles in Darfur has led to an increase in armed attacks on aid convoys and other devastating attacks against civilians. The government has consistently failed to stop such attacks by ethnic groups using government arms and vehicles.

On 31 July, the northern Rizeigat group -- armed with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns and using scores of militarized vehicles -- mounted an attack on the Tarjem group which left at least 68 people dead. Both groups identify themselves as Arabs and have been members of the Janjawid and various Sudanese government-backed paramilitary forces such as the Popular Defence Force (PDF).

On the same day, the UN Security Council agreed to send a newly strengthened African Union-United Nations hybrid force to Darfur, but further action is needed.

"If weapons continue to flow into Darfur and peacekeepers are not given the power to disarm and demobilize all armed opposition groups and Janjawid militia, the ability of the new peacekeeping force to protect civilians will be severely impeded," said Erwin van der Borght, Director of Amnesty International's Africa Program

"The UN Security Council must ensure that the arms embargo on Darfur is fully and effectively enforced and that peacekeepers are mandated to disarm or demobilize such groups."

Darfur/CAR/Chad: Crucible of Violence

From Reuters

Central African Republic's rebel Popular Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy (APRD) is suffering from disillusionment and desertions after two years of rebellion that have achieved little, observers say.

The rebel group operates in northwestern CAR, which could be covered by a European Union peacekeeping force proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to protect civilians and humanitarian workers in eastern parts of Chad, where hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled from neighbouring Darfur.

The force would also work in the Central African Republic to try to block the transit of armed groups between Sudan and Chad, complementing a hybrid U.N.-African Union force in Darfur.

Here are some facts about the violent border triangle area.

WHICH COUNTRIES ARE IN THE TRIANGLE?

* CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC - Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries despite diamond wealth, lies in the centre of Africa encompassing rainforest in the southwest to savannah in the north.

-- Its 4 million people have a life expectancy of 42 years and an average annual income of $260, World Bank data show.

* CHAD - Another of the world's poorest countries, Chad began producing oil in 2003 with the completion of a $3.7 billion pipeline linking oilfields to terminals on the Atlantic coast. In 2005, it was ranked the world's most corrupt country in a Transparency International survey.

* SUDAN - At 2.5 million sq km (967,500 sq miles), Sudan is Africa's largest country, straddling the middle reaches of the Nile. Oil was a catalyst in its long, bitter north-south war.

CONFLICT IN THE TRIANGLE / DOMESTIC TURMOIL:

* CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC - The country has had 11 mutinies or attempted coups in the past decade. President Francois Bozize, a former army general, seized power in a coup in 2003 before legitimising his presidency through a 2005 election.

-- The United Nations estimates 290,000 people have been forced from their homes since the latest violence began in 2005.

* CHAD - A lightning assault on N'Djamena in April 2006 was launched from the east by rebels in an unsuccessful bid to overthrow President Idriss Deby, who went on to win an election.

* SUDAN - Darfur rebels took up arms in 2003, saying the government discriminated against mostly non-Arabs there. Experts estimate 200,000 people have been killed although Khartoum says only 9,000 have died.

CROSS-BORDER TENSIONS:

-- Tens of thousands of refugees from fighting in Central African Republic have crossed into southern Chad.

-- A rebel attack late last year on the Central African Republic town of Birao more than 800 km (500 miles) from the capital Bangui marked a spillover south of the Darfur conflict.

-- Violence has spread from Darfur into Chad, which accuses Sudan of helping cross-border rebel attacks that have worsened ethnic tensions and triggered a flood of refugees into eastern Chad. Khartoum denies the charge.

-- Janjaweed militia fighters, allied to the Sudanese army against Sudanese rebels in Darfur, have also staged cross-border raids into Chad and appear to be allied with some Chadian rebels.

-- Chad and Sudan agreed last month at a summit in Libya not to interfere in each other's internal affairs.

Sudan: U.N. Chief Calls for Troop Removal

From the AP

The U.N. chief has called on the Sudanese military to remove troops remaining in southern Sudan, expressing disappointment that a July 9 deadline was not met as called for in a 2005 peace deal.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Thursday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also said the formation of joint military units comprising government soldiers from the north and former rebels from the south is significantly behind schedule.

He lamented that supposedly integrated units are operating separately, under different chains of command. One result, Ban said, has been continuing instability in some areas.

"In southern Sudan, the activities of some regular armed forces and local militias, the exploitation of oil resources and tribal insecurity continue to pose challenges for the protection of civilians," he said, singling out a May 5 attack by one tribe that left 54 members of another tribe dead, mainly women.

Forming a fully integrated professional army, Ban said, "remains one of the key challenges ahead."

According to the timelines in the 2005 agreement that ended a 21-year civil war between the mostly Muslim north and mainly Christian south, formation of the joint units is a prerequisite for the full redeployment of rebel forces from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States, Ban said.

The joint units are also mandated to protect Sudan's oil fields, while oil installations are to be demilitarized under the agreement, he said.

Ban, who is expected to visit Sudan next month, strongly urged the two parties to complete the assignment of troops to the joint units, "which is already some nine months overdue."

While much of the redeployment of Sudanese troops has been carried out as required, Ban said, the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, acknowledge that some 3,600 troops remain in the south. Some southern civilian sources, including the governor of Unity State, contend the figure is much higher.

The Sudanese military claims the troops are needed to protect the oil fields until the joint units are fully deployed, but the rebels don't agree, he said.

"I call upon SAF immediately to remove all remaining regular military elements from southern Sudan, with the exception of those earmarked for joint integration units," Ban said.

CAR: Sporadic Bush War Wearies Forgotten Rebels

From Reuters

Bertin Wafio sits in a village clearing sipping tea from a flask, his teenage bodyguards self-consciously examining their ancient rifles and wearily scanning the horizon.

"We have been in the bush for two years now, fighting to bring peace and security to our country," said Wafio, one of the leaders of Central African Republic's Popular Army for the Restoration of the Republic and Democracy (APRD).

"Those who are currently governing the country do not respond to the wishes of the population ... We want the most rapid change possible."

The APRD has made little progress in dislodging President Francois Bozize, who seized power in an uprising in March 2003 and was elected two years later.

People in the area say the group was once financed by former President Ange-Felix Patasse, whom Bozize overthrew in 2003, but the money has dried up. Wafio says he has 3,000 men but they lack heavy weapons.

Only three senior APRD commanders have a satellite phone, meaning its units are sometimes forced to use messengers on bicycle or horseback to communicate, one observer said.

With too few guns to go round, many rebels carry clubs or machetes. Even some of their guns are home-made.

Civilians in the area say more and more rebel fighters are deserting or defecting to the government ranks, fed up with going hungry in the bush -- something Wafio acknowledges.

"We are working with humans, and in a society you can't have everybody who accepts the same idea ... In the bush it's not easy and some people leave for a better life," Wafio said. Since the group began sporadic attacks on government positions in September 2005, large parts of northwest CAR have been ravaged by successive raids by rebels, government troops and fighters from across the northern border in Chad.

A European Union-led force proposed by the U.N. to complement a planned peacekeeping force in Darfur would mean up to 3,000 troops being assigned to Chad and northern CAR.

In the meantime, villagers complain of looting and thousands of mud and straw houses have been torched, mainly by government troops who accuse local people of supporting the rebels.

Humanitarian agencies say around 290,000 people have been forced from their homes, some surviving by foraging in the bush. Others have fled over the border to Chad or Cameroon.

Living off the land, the rebels have fared little better.

A separate uprising launched across the border from Sudan's Darfur region late last year by the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) captured a swathe of northeastern CAR, but was repulsed with help from French fighter jets and special forces.

Vague talk of a united rebel front with the APRD petered out when the UFDR signed a peace deal with the government in April.

"The rebels here are abandoned. They need money to continue their movement," the observer, with years of experience in CAR, told Reuters in Paoua. "Their aim is to destabilise the country and to make it ungovernable."

Like other rebel groups across the violent heart of Africa stretching from Darfur and Chad down to Democratic Republic of Congo, the APRD uses child soldiers. Wafio is unrepentant.

"Yes, they carry arms, but they are all at least 12 years old," Wafio said, surrounded by his youthful bodyguards.

"They have their reasons to come here, because they have been persecuted and their relatives have asked us to integrate them for their own security. They cannot stay in their own villages."

Wafio says just 3 percent of his fighters are children. Critics say the real figure is more like 40 percent.

Villagers in the area have mixed feelings about Wafio's men.

"There are quite a few of them, enough to completely encircle our village," said a teacher in Betoko, a half-deserted village 40 km (25 miles) north of Paoua where APRD fighters have set up as self-appointed protectors.

"We don't know where they are from, and we are not allowed to ask them anything," said the teacher, who asked not to be identified to avoid possible reprisals. "It's a menace."

Chad: Ethnic Clashes Kill 12

From AFP

Clashes between two ethnic groups in the Guereda region of eastern Chad near Sudan have left 12 people dead, says a Chadian military source.

The clashes on Wednesday "opposed the Tama community ... with the Zaghawa population, killing one on the Zaghawa side and 11 on the Tama side", said the source.

Armed clashes between the two groups in eastern Chad had been on the increase since the end of December when President Idriss Deby Itno brought into the government a faction headed by a Tama rebel leader.

Rebels from Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim's United Front for Change (FUC) were tasked by Deby to help the Chadian army quell unrest in the area, where several rebel groups including a Zaghawa-led militia were active.

Violence between the two ethnic groups had spilled over from the western Sudanese region of Darfur since 2003. Sudan and Chad accused each other of supporting rebel forces in their respective territories.

Clashes in the two countries, as well as in northeastern Central African Republic, had forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee and prompted warnings by international observers of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Chadian cabinet said on Thursday that it was worried by the "situation of insecurity, which is continuing and which risks inflaming the whole region with unforeseeable consequences".

It called on "all those who are in illegal possession of weapons of war to surrender them immediately to the military, administrative and traditional authorities".

It said: "If this order is not respected, the forces of order and defence will have to disarm by force" those failing to comply.

Darfur: Rush Limbaugh Speaks

I'm posting this simply to point out that Rush Limbaugh is an absolute dumbfuck (and I say that, not as a Democrat, but as someone who knows and cares something about Darfur)

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it's great to talk to you. I talked to you once before. I've been listening to you for a couple years now and I think I'm getting brighter, but there's a lot to be learned, I know, and I'm no expert in foreign affairs, but what really confuses me about the liberals is the hypocrisy when they talk about how we have no reason to be in Iraq and helping those people, but yet everybody wants us to go to Darfur. I mean, aren't we going to end up in a quagmire there? I don't understand. Can you enlighten me on that?

RUSH: Yeah, you're not going to believe this, but it's very simple. And the sooner you believe it, and the sooner you let this truth permeate the boundaries you have that tell you this is certainly not possible, the better you will understand Democrats in everything. You are right. They want to get us out of Iraq, but they can't wait to get us into Darfur.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: It's black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc they're in trouble.

CALLER: Yes, the black population.

RUSH: Right. So you go into Darfur, and you go into South Africa. You get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, do the same thing.

CALLER: I can't believe it's really that simple.

Sudan: Top Canadian Diplomat and EU Envoy Expelled

From the AP

Sudan on Thursday expelled the top Canadian diplomat and the European Commission envoy from the country for what was described as "meddling in its affairs," the state news agency reported.

The two diplomats were summoned separately to the foreign ministry, which declared each a "persona non grata," and handed them expulsion notes, Ali Al Sadeq, the foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency.

It was not immediately clear why the two were being expelled but many Western countries have been critical of the Sudanese government's role in the country's wartorn Darfur region.

Sadeq said the two diplomats were "involved in activities that constitute an intervention into the internal affairs of the Sudan, a matter that contradict their diplomatic duties and mission."

It was unclear whether the diplomatic jargon inferred for example, spying activities, as has been the case in the past, or meant that the Sudanese felt the two or their countries had been raising embarrassing issues.

SUNA initially reported that the diplomats had been summoned to the foreign ministry on Wednesday but in a later report said the summoning took place Thursday.

The spokesman also said that the foreign ministry informed both diplomats that "Sudan is keen to maintain the relation of cooperation linking it with the European Commission and with Canada."

"This incident should not hamper the relations between the Sudan and both the EC and Canada," Sadeq said.

The Canadian embassy in Khartoum and the European Commission office declined to immediately respond to phone call queries by The Associated Press.

In Brussels, the European Commission was reluctant to say much at this stage but EU spokesman Antonia Mochan told The Associated Press that the commission "received a letter relating to the position of the head of delegation and we're trying to resolve the issue."

The Sudanese foreign ministry, as is customary, did not identify the diplomats by name, but a foreign ministry's diplomatic listing records Kent Degerfelt as EU head of mission here and Alan Bones as Canadian charge d'affaires.

Chad: Poland Will Send Soldiers to EU Mission

From Reuters

Polish soldiers will join a proposed European Union mission in Chad aimed at protecting refugees trapped in the violent region bordering Darfur, Defence Minister Aleksander Szczyglo said on Thursday.

Under a proposal from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the EU force would protect civilians, humanitarian workers and the U.N. mission in Chad, which is facing an influx of tens of thousands of refugees from neighbouring Darfur.

The force -- seen by EU diplomats as comprising 1,500-3,000 troops -- would also work in the Central African Republic to try to block the transit of armed groups between Sudan and Chad.

"I have taken a decision to start preparations of our troops for a possible mission in Chad, which could start as early as this autumn or at the beginning of next year," Szczyglo told Reuters in an interview.

If Ban's plan goes ahead, it would complement the dispatch of up to 26,000 U.N. and African Union troops and police to Darfur, which has been locked in a four-year conflict.

EU foreign ministers are expected to make a final decision on the force in mid September.

Szczyglo said the timing of the mission had yet to be set but diplomats say EU member state troops could go in October at the earliest. Poland has soldiers on foreign missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Darfur: Rebel Faction Threatens to Pull Out of Peace Talks

From the AP

One of the main rebel factions battling the Sudanese government in the war torn western Darfur region threatened Thursday to reconsider its participation in peace talks following a raid by government forces on a refugee camp.

Police entered the Kalma refugee camp in South Darfur province on Tuesday following an attack two days earlier on a nearby security post, the official Sudanese News Agency reported. Authorities arrested at least nine people and seized drugs and weapons, it added.

The Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army faction, led by Ahmed Abdel Shafi, said in a statement that 1,000 Sudanese troops were involved in the raid, which he claimed resulted in 40 arrests and five deaths.

"In light of this senseless act ... the SLM/A is currently reconsidering its commitment made during the Arusha Consultative Meeting early this month with regard to re-energizing the political peace process," the group said.

Darfur: Buying Time

An op-ed by Gerard Prunier in The Mail & Guardian

Unamid is conceived of as a peacekeeping force, not an invading army, but so far there is no peace to be kept in Darfur. So, on August 3, a bevy of Darfuri rebel groups descended on the small Tanzanian town of Arusha. There were 16 faction leaders, not all of them bona fide. As one said: “Anyone with a Land Cruiser and a satellite phone can proclaim himself a faction leader. The more you recognise individuals as faction leaders by inviting them to talks, the more factions there will be.”

Minnawi was there, carrying his heavy load of compromises, as were Jar al-Naby and Suleiman Marjan, the two main field commanders for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), and various members of the Islamist-linked Justice and Equality Movement. But Abd-el-Wahid an-Nur, historically the SLA leader, was not there, nor was Suleiman Jamous, the Gandhi-like civil society activist still “hospitalised” in Kordofan under UN protection.

The powerful leader of the SLM Unity faction, Abdallah Yahia, insisted that his group would not take part as long as Jamous, a sick and elderly man, was not released and given proper medical treatment.

The Sudanese government, meanwhile, stated categorically that the whole point of the meeting was simply to get the non-signatories to adhere to the agreement and that the agreement would, under no circumstances, be renegotiated. Since the participants all agreed that the agreement was a dead proposition, this was not an auspicious beginning.

In Arusha, as in Abuja, Khartoum’s tactics appear to have been to try to divide its enemies and get them to sign anything at all. This is similar to the approach it employed two and a half years ago when it got John Garang and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to sign the so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Nairobi.

Today the CPA is falling apart because of Khartoum’s bad faith in implementing it, but from the government’s point of view it does not really matter: it has already bought itself 30 months and has almost that much time again before the chickens come home to roost during elections scheduled for 2009. The end of the North-South war also gave Khartoum’s Chinese allies some basis for supporting them internationally -- it has divided and confused Khartoum’s enemies and enabled it to showcase the SPLA as inefficient and corrupt in its handling of the South’s semi-independence. Bingo.

In the objectives of the Sudanese government, the “DPA redux” (or whatever else is signed in Arusha) is supposed to achieve a similar goal in Darfur: to buy time.

Which is why Khartoum is not pleased with the guerrilla’s position paper, which addresses one of the core questions of the conflict: land.

This is because Khartoum’s motivations for favouring the Arab tribes is basic: ever since the CPA was signed, the monopoly that Khartoum’s Arab elite has on power in the country is potentially threatened. The CPA is not working, but it exists and it provides for a referendum on self-determination for Southern Sudan in 2011 and, if it is not stopped or rigged, it will produce a vote for independence.

If Darfur is not solidly in Arab hands by then, it might create a black African ally for the Southern Sudanese on the Arab bastion’s western flank. This would threaten the North’s access to southern oilfields, which the Darfur guerrilla leaders know and which is why they have pushed land as the main discussion point with Khartoum in the coming months.

The Darfur guerrilla groups know that Khartoum does not and cannot control the monstrous tribal behemoth it has created. The Arab tribes in Darfur are fighting one another over the land that is left behind by the 2,5-million internally displaced people, now cooped up in camps, and the rebel groups’ strategy is to deepen the contradictions of the Sudanese government’s strategy, rather than rush into signing a probably worthless piece of paper.

But this is not what the “international community” wants. Its stock- in-trade is worthless paper -- and it would like one more piece. But the guerrillas, who have just launched another offensive in South Darfur, might have more brutally realistic aspirations.

Darfur: ICG VP on Way Forward

From VOA

The African Union says talks between the Sudanese government and rebel factions to end the four-year conflict in Darfur could start in October this year. The AU’s special envoy for Sudan Salim Ahmed Salim reportedly told reporters Wednesday that the exact date would be set by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the head of the African Union Commission Alpha Omar Konare. Salim reportedly met Wednesday with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol.

Earlier this month eight Darfur rebel groups agreed on a common negotiating platform for peace talks with the Sudanese government.

Don Steinberg is vice president for the International Crisis Group that focuses on preventing conflicts around the world. He told VOA that if and when the talks finally begin they would have to address all issues of concern such as wealth and power sharing and humanitarian.

“This is not a process that can be done piece meal. It includes a lot of power sharing arrangement or expanded humanitarian access or a wealth sharing agreement. I would say though that the comprehensive peace agreement signed between the government and the southern movements, those represent the framework through which the government in Khartoum will be democratized, will be sensitized to the problems of regions and their needs for inclusion,” he said

Steinberg said the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 was a model agreement because it brought southern leaders into key positions in Khartoum and a share of the oil wealth.

He described as an important step in the peace process the recent Arusha agreement among Darfur rebels on a common platform for negotiation with the Sudanese government.

“It has been essential for the rebel movements in Darfur to come together to present a common negotiating position vis-à-vis the government, and this is a next step in that process,” he said.

Steinberg said any successful outcome of the upcoming Darfur rebels talks with the Sudan government would require the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

“Both sides have been exceptionally slow in meeting the commitments they made in this comprehensive peace agreement, and that means to push ahead rapidly. We are facing key deadlines, and to the extent that the people in both the north and the south believe that that agreement is just words on a peace paper, it would undercut the entire movement toward democracy and economic growth and political stability in Sudan,” he said.

Steinberg said because of its basic philosophy of inclusion and democratic governance of self-determination, the comprehensive peace agreement provides the basis for solving situations like Darfur, Blue Nile, or the Nuba Mountains.

Darfur: One Way to Measure a Nation's Greatness

An opinion piece in The Moscow Times

Russian newspapers almost never write about events in the Darfur province of Sudan, where bloody fighting between government forces and Muslim rebels has dragged on for years. The country was mentioned briefly in the country's print and television news in mid-August, but only in connection with an initiative by a number of U.S. congressmen to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing because of China's "incorrect" policies in Sudan. Their primary complaint is that Chinese firms, motivated exclusively by profit, have abandoned all moral principles in their attempts to gain a foothold in the Sudanese market.

The typical editor or producer of a Russian newspaper or television station would probably say that readers and viewers aren't interested in Darfur. I don't find such statements very convincing. I think virtually any subject taken from any part of the world can be interesting, depending on how it is presented and the quality of the reporting.

For example, I recently listened with great interest to an account of the situation in Darfur from a Russian politician who had traveled there as a tourist. In addition to showing me some extremely interesting photos, he confirmed that the whole system of humanitarian aid distribution in Darfur was nothing but a highly profitable business run by companies with tribal connections to the nobility. Isn't this a good theme for an investigative reporter? Sure it is, but you won't read about it in any reputable Russian publication or see any television coverage on the subject. You won't learn anything at all in the press about the enormous tragedy in Darfur that has already claimed over 200,000 lives and turned a huge region of Africa into a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Russian journalistic community is too lazy to come up with new stories, much less to present the outside world to their readers and encourage them to expand their outlook. A large part of the journalistic community has long relied on the authorities for instructions and recommendations on what to report. To be sure, there are a small number of journalists who love to busy themselves with criticizing the authorities from time to time. But in either case, the focus of media coverage is on domestic themes. When the outside world is presented in the Russian media, it appears very small and squalid.

In contrast, most reputable Western newspapers report on the situation in Darfur fairly frequently. Leading U.S. newspapers, for example, run stories on it almost every other day. And the Darfur conflict also has a place in U.S. foreign policy, with Washington effectively leading international efforts to end the fighting there.

In general, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has given increasingly greater attention to Africa over the years. Washington has increased its financial aid to African nations by 67 percent and allocated an additional $15 billion for the fight against AIDS there. Most political analysts explain this increased emphasis on international humanitarian issues, which include human trafficking and sexual enslavement, as arising from a sharp increase in the Christian evangelical movement's political influence in Washington.

Darfur received some coverage in the Russian media not long ago, but only in connection with the latest Group of Eight meeting in Germany. No other initiatives regarding Darfur were made either before or after that meeting. In this respect, Russian diplomacy closely resembles the Russian press: They both have very little interest in the topic. Diplomats are extremely passive regarding almost all international humanitarian problems.

But if the country's politicians are increasingly vocal with their cries that "Russia is back" on the international stage, then they should show much more interest in international humanitarian issues. After all, a country's greatness and standing are measured not only be the number of times it says "no" to its partners.

Sudan: Military Missed Re-Deployment Deadline

From the UN News Center

Sudan’s armed forces missed a deadline last month to re-deploy out of the south of the country, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in his latest report charting the progress being made on implementing the comprehensive peace agreement ending the long-running north-south civil war.

Voicing regret that the 9 July deadline “has not been fully met,” Mr. Ban calls on the military to immediately remove from the south all of its remaining elements, with the exception of those soldiers designated for new joint integrated units with the former rebels, known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

Although most of the Sudanese military had re-deployed by the 9 July deadline, at least 3,600 troops still remain, mostly in Upper Nile state. The armed forces say they are necessary to protect oilfields pending the placement of the joint integrated units, but this is disputed by the SPLA.

Mr. Ban writes that the development of those integrated units “remains an issue of central importance,” with the assignment of troops to them now nine months overdue. He also notes that their formation is a prerequisite for SPLA forces to fully re-deploy from Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

Under the January 2005 peace pact that ended the decades-long war between north and south, and granted some autonomy to the south, the joint units are mandated to protect key oilfields and the oil installations themselves are to be demilitarized.

The Secretary-General says management of Sudan’s oil sector, uncertainty over the status of Abyei, a disputed area, and agreement over the boundary between north and south will be key issues for the parties and the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) to resolve in the coming months.

The reintegration of ex-combatants from other armed groups, particularly the Southern Sudan Defence Force, will also be critical, he says.

But Mr. Ban welcomes the progress made towards resolving outstanding disputes over wealth sharing and supporting the return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) to their home towns and villages.

He also praises “the intensive contacts and negotiations” between the two sides in the joint institutions set up as a result of the comprehensive peace deal.

But the pace of preparations for mid-term elections, scheduled for 2009, “has so far been disappointing, and both parties have to accelerate work dramatically on the necessary legislative reforms.”

Chad: Gov't Agrees to Oil Revenue Transparency

From the AP

The government of Chad said Thursday it will adhere to a program designed to put pressure on countries to be open about revenues from exports of oil, natural gas and minerals.

Launched in 2002 by Britain's then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is meant to allow ordinary citizens to hold their leaders to account.

"The principles of this initiative will from now on be applied by Chad and the revenues ... will be declared in total transparency," Prime Minister Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye said in a statement.

Many experts believe that producing oil in unstable countries encourages repression and corruption as the ruling elite scrambles for a share of the windfall.

An impoverished central African nation, Chad is one of the continent's newest oil producers. It shares a border with the violence-wracked Darfur region of Sudan, whose conflict has spilled over into Chadian territory.

Competition for power in Chad has intensified since it began exporting oil three years ago through a World Bank funded pipeline. Rebels last year attacked, but failed to take, the capital.

In 2006, the World Bank froze the country's oil revenue accounts and suspended loans after President Idriss Deby tapped into revenues intended for poverty relief programs.

He told reporters shortly before elections that the money would be used to buy weapons instead.

After the Oil Ministry threatened to shut down production, a compromise was reached with the World Bank that allowed the government to use 30 percent of revenues for its own purposes, up from 20 percent. The rest is earmarked for development programs.

Power has never changed hands at the ballot box in Chad, which was a French colony until 1960. A 1990 takeover by Idriss Deby brought a semblance of peace after three decades of civil war and an invasion by Libya.

But Deby, who is serving a third term as president, is becoming increasingly isolated and members of his own family have joined the rebellion. Last year's election was boycotted by the main opposition, who said the vote was not free or fair.

Uganda: LRA Says Funds Not Sufficient

From VOA

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) Rebels say they have been informed that about 600 thousand dollars has been raised by the donor community to enable the LRA hold consultations, agreed upon in the third agenda item of the current peace talks, which is accountability and recompilation. But the rebels say the money would not be sufficient to meet their demands. They are therefore asking the donor community through peace mediator and Vice President of Southern Sudan, Riek Marchar for more money.

David Matsanga is an advisor to the LRA rebels on ICC matters. From the Kenyan capital, Nairobi he tells reporter Peter Clottey that the money they are requesting is not going into individual rebel pockets, but rather for wide consultations as stipulated in the third agenda item.

"Dr. Riek Marchar has communicated to the LRA delegation that the donors have given $600,000 for our consultation, and we have not met officially with Dr. Riek Marchar to discuss the way forward," Matsanga noted.

He said although the rebels appreciate the donor community's effort in raising the funds for their consultations, the money raised so far would not be enough for the type of consultations LRA intends to undertake.

"To consult widely means you don't leave any stone unturned. What we have insisted and what we have told the whole world, and which we shall continue to tell the whole world is that this money is not going to the pocket of any individual. This money is to facilitate people who would be airlifted, who would be driven by buses from northern Uganda… and all parts of Uganda. And then from those who are coming from Europe, they must come and give us guidance on how we should build protocol and mechanisms for this peace process… so the amount of money that has been given to the moderator is still at the low end," he noted.

Matsanga said the rebels are rather supposed to be allocated more money since they are not in government, but the opposite is what has happened with the Uganda government using more money for its consultations.

"Given that we are not in government, and the government itself is also consulting, but using more money, more money than what is on the table. Given the government that has got all types of things, surely, the amount was not balanced at all," Matsanga, said.

He blames the international community for supporting the Uganda government rather having an interest in ending the war that has adversely affected the people in northern Uganda.

"The international community has also been funding the war, funding partly the Uganda government. 50% of the Uganda budget is given by the international donors of which 50% again is used on arms to fight insurgencies. This asks a very clear question: What is more important? Is it the peace? So we appreciate what the international community has done. You see, we are taking people 1,000 miles away from their homes and some are coming 10,000 miles away. We need facilities that will enable the people to consult widely. The peace must be sustainable once and for all," he said.

Darfur: Talks May Begin in October

From AFP

Talks between the Sudanese government and rebel factions to try to end the four-year conflict in Darfur could start in October, the African Union's special envoy for Sudan said yesterday.

"We are working on the basis that the talks will take place in early October," Salim Ahmed Salim told reporters after a meeting with Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol.

He said the exact date would be set by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who is due to visit Sudan next month, and the head of the African Union Commission Alpha Omar Konare.

Representatives of Darfur's many rebel groups gathered earlier this month in the Tanzanian town of Arusha for UN- and AU-sponsored talks aimed at unifying their stance ahead of final peace negotiations with Khartoum.

According to UN estimates, at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced by the combined effect of war and famine since the civil conflict erupted in Darfur four-and-a-half years ago.

A peace deal was signed once with the Sudanese government in Abuja in May 2006, but only one out of three negotiating factions endorsed the agreement, sparking deep divisions among rebels and a new surge in violence.

Sudanese government spokesman Ali al-Sadek said Khartoum was ready to start negotiations at any time.

"We don't have any problems in disucssing the concerns of rebel groups as long as the Abuja accord is the reference point for negotiations," he added.

However, a leading rebel faction said earlier yesterday it was reassessing its commitment to the latest peace initiative because of recent raids by Sudanese government forces.

"Our commitment in Arusha was that we endorsed the AU-UN roadmap to jumpstart the political process. Given what the government of Sudan is doing on the ground, we are re-assessing it," said Nouri Abdalla, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement.

"If the government of Sudan does not stop its policy of terrorising civilians, there can be no political process," he added.

Ban, meanwhile, is expected in Sudan in early September in a bid to advance the deployment of a hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur after it finally won the backing of the government in Khartoum.

Reuters: Police Raid on Camp Raises Tensions/Rebel Faction Reconsiders Talks

From Reuters

A government raid on Darfur's volatile Kalma camp raised tensions in Sudan's remote west ahead of peace talks, as insurgents accused Khartoum of trying to force people to leave the camps housing some 2 million people.

Police arrested 19 people from Kalma camp for their alleged involvement in attacks on police posts in South Darfur that killed one policeman and injured eight, the state news agency reported.

"Regular police forces in South Darfur ... arrested 19 suspects and seized five weapons, some hashish and other military equipment," SUNA said late on Tuesday.

SUNA quoted South Darfur police chief Omar Mohammed Ali as saying those arrested in Kalma camp were suspected of carrying out Sunday's attack in al-Salam camp and another last week near Kalma, which killed one policeman and injured eight.

Rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) official Ahmed Abdel Shafie said the attack on Kalma camp was a "clear indication" Khartoum was not serious about talks and was pursuing a military solution to the conflict.

A spokesman for Kalma camp, Abu Sharrad, denied any of those arrested were involved in the attacks on police.

Sharrad said camp residents would demonstrate every day until those arrested were released under U.N. auspices.

On Tuesday police surrounded Kalma camp where they said suspected rebels behind the police attacks were holed up.

Sharrad told Reuters on Wednesday six people were injured during the police operations and 30 were arrested.

"They destroyed six tents and arrested 30 people and looted 175 houses," he said. "The forces were from the police, army and border intelligence."

He criticized African Union forces, which have 7,000 troops and police monitoring a shaky Darfur ceasefire.

"We told both the United Nations and the African Union what was happening yesterday and they did not come for seven hours after the event," he said, adding the AU only stayed a short while because the camp was still full of tear gas.

More than 2.2 million people have fled their homes to miserable camps since 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum, charging it with neglect. At least 240,000 others are refugees in neighboring Chad.

Kalma is one of Darfur's most volatile camps, with 90,000 people who vehemently reject a May 2006 peace deal signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions.

Khartoum has agreed to a joint U.N.-AU force to incorporate the struggling African mission and help stabilize security ahead of renewed peace talks due to begin by October.

SLA leader Shafie said Khartoum was trying to empty the camps to lessen international attention on the conflict.

"They don't want these people inside camps because they are the reason the international forces are coming to Sudan and why human rights groups are documenting crimes," he said.

"They want to eliminate these camps and to force these people to leave them," he told Reuters, adding it did not create a conducive atmosphere ahead of talks.

From IRIN

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) staged a demonstration on 22 August after Sudanese forces raided one of Darfur’s largest camps to arrest suspects believed to be behind a series of attacks on police stations.

“We will continue the demonstrations until United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon comes,” IDP spokesman Abu Sharad told IRIN from Kalma camp in South Darfur.

He said 2,800 police, army and border intelligence officers surrounded the camp, which hosts an estimated 90,000 people. “They arrested 30 IDPs, burnt down 12 shelters and looted 175 others,” he added.

The Sudanese press reported that police arrested 19 people during the 21 August raid in connection with an incident in which a policeman was killed and eight others injured.

“We will continue to pursue outlaws who terrorise the people and loot their belongings, especially after their attack on a police station in Al Salam IDP camp,” South Darfur police chief Omar Mohammed Ali was quoted as saying.

African Union troops monitoring a fragile truce in the region responded after about eight hours and the UN arrived the next morning, according to Sharad.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said: “We do not have reports about civilians being killed or injured [during the raid].”

Kalma is one of Darfur’s most unstable camps. Two years ago, IDPs set fire to government offices, forcing officials to abandon the camp. IDPs also killed an AU translator in the camp.

The AU has been unable to end the violence in the region and has met resistance in trying to promote a May 2006 peace deal that was signed by only one of three negotiating rebel groups.

Most IDPs in Kalma support Abdul Wahid Mohammed Nur, faction leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, who rejected the peace agreement.

“The government continues to practise brutal killings and displacement of our people in camps after forcing them to flee their villages,” Nour’s group said in a statement on the incident in Kalma.

From AFP

A leading Darfur rebel faction said Wednesday it was "reassessing" its commitment to an internationally-sponsored peace initiative in the light of recent raids by Sudanese government forces.

"On Monday night, government of Sudan forces attacked Kalma camp (in South Darfur) with some 35 Land Cruisers and 1,500 troops," said Nouri Abdalla, a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement faction of Ahmed Abdel Shafi.

"Five people were killed in the raid, two of them were children and around 40 rebels were arrested," he told AFP by phone from Kampala. The casualties could not immediately be independently verified.

Abdalla charged that Khartoum was flushing out rebels from Darfur's camps for internally displaced people "in order to block the deployment of the hybrid force."

Khartoum last month approved a landmark resolution for the deployment of a large peacekeeping force including troops from the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU), to replace an embattled African contingent in Darfur.

During a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania earlier this month, most Darfur rebel factions agreed on a common platform to pave the way for final settlement talks with Khartoum.

The consultations, which were sponsored by the UN and the AU, also led to a series of confidence-building measures on the part of the rebels, notably a commitment to facilitate humanitarian access and halt military operations.

"Our commitment in Arusha was that we endorsed the AU-UN roadmap to jumpstart the political process. Given what the government of Sudan is doing on the ground, we are re-assessing it," Abdalla said.

"If the government of Sudan does not stop its policy of terrorising civilians, there can be no political process," he added.

Khartoum has said that the sweep in Kalma camp was in reaction to an attack by suspected rebels on police posts, an allegation denied by Darfur rebel groups.

Darfur: Arabs Seek Role With Rebels

From the Washington Post.

To the dozen or so Darfur rebel groups attempting to unite ahead of possible negotiations with the Sudanese government, add one more: the United Revolutionary Force Front, a nascent movement that says it represents nomadic Arab tribes that have been unfairly associated with the conflict's notorious government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed.

"We want to make an agreement between Arab and non-Arab people to be one," the movement's spokesman, al-Hadi Agabeldour, said in an interview here. "If negotiations begin and our group is not participating, the negotiations are not completed."

The four-year-old conflict between the Sudanese government and rebels in the country's western region of Darfur has killed at least 400,000 people and displaced 2.5 million more, international experts say.

In the dominant pattern of the violence, Sudan's Arab-led government has armed the region's nomadic Arab tribes to carry out attacks against non-Arab farming communities, which form the popular base of the rebellion.

But the conflict has always been far more intricate than that. Plenty of nomadic tribal leaders have refused to take part in the Janjaweed militias, in many cases becoming victims themselves, as traditional migration routes have been cut off, economic relationships severed and tribal conflicts heightened by the proliferation of weapons.

In that context, the United Revolutionary Force Front represents what experts say is growing disillusionment with the Sudanese government among Darfur's Arab communities, a development that is potentially damaging for the Khartoum government, which has relied on Arab support, or at least neutrality, in the conflict.

"Over the last year there have been various developments indicating that Arab groups are becoming less and less happy with Khartoum," said Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., who has written extensively on the conflict. "Because what has Khartoum given the Arab people as a whole? They've given Janjaweed money and weapons. But that does not really benefit the Arab population as a whole."

It is not surprising, Reeves said, that a group such as the United Revolutionary Force Front has emerged to stake a claim to that sort of disaffection, particularly given recent developments in the conflict.

Sudan recently agreed to the deployment of a 26,000-strong joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force, which will absorb a 7,000-member A.U. force that has failed to stop the violence.

That impending deployment, along with signals that the Sudanese government and the rebels could enter into negotiations soon, has set off jockeying for position among Darfur's various rebel groups.

The rebels have been accused of contributing to widespread banditry across the largely roadless region, where power is often measured by the number of Land Cruisers in one's possession.

The Sudanese government, meanwhile, has continued its campaign to crush them. On Tuesday, government forces surrounded one of Darfur's most volatile camps, Kalma, to force out rebels that government officials contend are behind a spate of attacks on police there, the Reuters news agency reported.

Agabeldour declined to comment on the strength of his group's force on the ground, but he listed several military campaigns in recent months against the Sudanese government.

He said the group was founded by students at the University of Khartoum in 1999 and tried to join one of Darfur's main rebel groups in recent years, but was rejected because rebel leaders suspected its members might be spies.

"We decided if we don't take up weapons, the government will not listen," he said. "We are a new generation, and we know our rights. The government has fabricated this conflict between groups. This should not be an Arab versus non-Arab conflict."

Agabeldour said the group, whose logo is a sword crossed with a ballpoint pen, has written letters to the United Nations, the European Union and the U.S. government explaining its cause.

He said that he is in the Chadian capital because it is easier to get the word out about the movement here than in the bush.

The violence in Darfur has spilled across the border into eastern Chad, complicating a conflict here in which several rebel groups are seeking to overthrow the government of President Idriss Deby.

Darfur/Chad/CAR: France Circulates Draft Statement Giving OK to Plan for Military Operation

From the AP

The European Union and the United Nations would start planning for a joint operation in Chad and the Central African Republic under a French proposal circulated Tuesday that aims at protecting civilians from the spillover of the Darfur conflict.

France's new U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, who circulated the draft U.N. Security Council statement, said there was broad support for the joint operation and he expressed hope that the statement will be approved on Thursday.

The draft expresses the council's readiness to authorize an international operation using European Union troops and U.N. police for a year to protect international refugees, internally displaced people and civilians at risk in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic.

Ripert said he hopes the Security Council will adopt a resolution authorizing the new operation before the EU Council of Ministers meets on Sept. 17 to take a final decision on the EU force. Last month, the EU agreed to start planning for a possible 3,000-strong peacekeeping mission.

The four-year conflict between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia in Sudan's vast western Darfur region has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. A 7,000-member African Union force has been unable to stop the fighting.

The conflict has spilled over into Chad and Central African Republic, which also have faced attacks from rebels in their own countries.

Chadian President Idriss Deby, who opposed a U.N. force, agreed to an EU force after meeting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in June.

U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States supports the French proposal but has some questions about the relationship between the EU, the U.N. and the Chadian government, the role of the force, the duration of it mandate and “what comes after.”

In a report to the Security Council last Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proposed a U.N.-mandated mission with three main components: an EU military force; a new unit of Chad's police to maintain law and order in refugee camps, key towns and areas with large numbers of displaced civilians in eastern Chad; and a broad U.N. presence including up to 300 international police, military liaison officers, and experts in human rights, civil affairs and the rule of law.

France's Ripert said the deployment of EU troops and U.N. police will probably be followed by a U.N. peacekeeping operation, which Wolff agreed “is probably the logical result.”

“The humanitarian and security situation in Chad is very bad as the result of a spillover effect of the Darfur crisis,” Ripert said. “We have now together 400,000 refuges and internally displaced people in Chad, and we have more than 200,000 displaced people in the northern part of Central Africa. So we cannot go on like that.”

The Security Council has already authorized deployment of a 26,000-strong joint African Union-United Nations force to help quell the violence in Darfur.

Ripert said “by securing the zone inside both sides of the border, we hope that the whole effect will be positive.”

Darfur: U.N. Report Gives Gruesome Details on Mass Rapes

From the AP

A U.N. report released Tuesday describes gruesome new details about the rapes of dozens of Darfur women last year, saying they were sexually assaulted in front of each other, beaten with sticks and forced to cook and serve food to their attackers.

Some of the victims became pregnant as a result of rapes, allegedly carried out by the Sudanese soldiers and allied militiamen, the report by the U.N.'s top human rights office said. It accused the Sudanese government of failing to investigate the rapes.

“The abuses may also constitute war crimes,” said the report by the office of Louise Arbour, U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

The report alleged Sudanese forces and militiamen subjected about 50 women to multiple rapes and other violence in an attack on the eastern Darfur village of Deribat in late December. They also abducted many children, it said.

Darfur has been the scene of a four-year conflict between government-backed militias known as the janjaweed and rebel forces. More than 200,000 people have died and at least 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in the humanitarian disaster, according to U.N. estimates.

A February report by the International Criminal Court alleged there have been “mass rape of civilians who were known not to be participants in any armed conflict” in Darfur.

The ICC issued its first arrest warrants for war crimes in the Darfur conflict in May, seeking to try a government minister and a janjaweed militia leader on charges of mass slayings, rape and torture.

Arbour has said in the past that women are systematically raped in Darfur, many as soon as they leave the house to perform essential chores such as collecting firewood.

She has described the war crimes prosecutions so far as “grossly inadequate.”

In the latest report, a woman who had been abducted from Deribat with her 16-year-old daughter described how the victims were raped in front of each other. Those who resisted would be beaten with sticks.

The women were forced to cook and serve food to their abductors, but received only leftovers to eat, according to the report.

“A number of women became pregnant as a result of the rape,” posing a further health risk to them, it said.

The women suffered physical injuries and psychological trauma from the repeated rapes by many of the attackers, the report said.

Deribat was one of nine villages attacked in the eastern Jebel Marra region of Darfur at the time, it said, adding that 36 civilians were killed and many people were driven from their homes.

“Interviews indicate that the abducted women were systematically raped,” said the report, which was compiled by a team of U.N. human rights investigators. “Some children were beaten by their abductors and they were exposed to the traumatic scenes of rape,” it said.

Testimony from victims indicated that the attacks were committed by members of the Sudanese armed forces and affiliated groups, the report said.

Arbour's office urged the Sudanese government to “establish an independent body to investigate abduction, rape and sexual slavery committed in the region,” and said the suspects should be brought to justice.

Arbour's office said in a report last April that the military and its allies have been using rape as part of a wider assault on people belonging to the same ethnic group as some Darfuri rebels.

That report said that based on testimony collected by 30 U.N. human rights investigators working in Darfur, “it appears that rape during the December 2006 attacks was used as a weapon of war to cause humiliation and instill fear into the local population.”

The April report also said U.N. representatives presented the initial findings to local authorities in Darfur, but “no investigations were carried out by the authorities.”

Darfur: Genocide Charges Against General 'Unfounded'

From DPA

The Rwandan government rejected allegations Wednesday that a general set to lead a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur supervised killings during the country's 1994 genocide. General Karenzi Karake's appointment as deputy commander of a hybrid UN-African Union (AU) force for Sudan's embattled region was followed by allegations from a Belgium-based group that the man participated in the deaths of 8,000 people as well as the slaying of politicians.

"These are fabrications and the UN knows that," said Robert Masozera, spokesman for the Rwandan foreign ministry. "He is a well- known officer here and these allegations are unfounded."

The BBC reported Wednesday that the UN said it would investigate the charges.

Karake was part of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, which ended the genocide in 1994 by driving out the perpetrators who conducted the genocide and continued to root them out, even as many fled to the Congo to avoid reprisal.

In a statement released Monday, the Rwandan government said the accusations, which it blamed on an extremist group of Hutu refugees, were meant to "tarnish Rwanda's image and to derail efforts at stabilizing peace in the Sudan."

Darfur: How Many Dead ?

A post by Eric Reeves on Comment is Free - via ENOUGH

We should also consider the timeframe for various assessments. The conflict in Darfur has now raged for 54 months. Indeed, ethnic violence orchestrated by the Khartoum regime through its Arab militia proxies had claimed thousands of lives before the standard terminus a quo for the conflict, February 2003. No study considered by the ASA or the GAO is temporally inclusive; indeed one study favoured by the GAO includes data that reflect only about one-third the duration of the conflict.

Here it is important to understand the consequences of the last UN World Health Organization study of global mortality rates (published initially in spring 2005). At the time, a senior UN official at the time in emphatic terms that there would be no further global mortality studies done because of severe, sometimes violent harassment by Khartoum. The regime was clearly determined to make global mortality assessments impossible. And even the 2005 UN data and excess morality-rate study excluded most of south Darfur state because of insecurity; yet south Darfur has approximately half the population of Darfur as a whole.

Clearly there can be no certainty about Darfur mortality totals. But, for different reasons, we need both an authoritative lower limit and a credible upper limit. An authoritative "floor figure" for Darfur mortality was provided by a study published in Science (September 2006), one of the most distinguished peer-reviewed journals in the world. Professors John Hagan and Alberto Palloni are authors of the study, which established the currently most commonly cited figure for Darfur mortality, 200,000 dead.

The Hagan/Palloni study excluded CIJ data, which produced a significantly smaller figure for violent mortality than had appeared in Hagan's earlier co-authored study (spring 2005), which estimated that approximately 400,000 people had died from all causes at that point in the conflict. But the more astringent study in Science - not considered by the GAO - concludes with a significant statement about the range of mortality upwards from the "floor figure" established: "It is likely that the number of deaths for this conflict in Greater Darfur is higher than 200,000 individuals, and it is possible that the death toll is much higher." Hagan declared to the New York Times (September 15, 2006), "We could easily be talking about 400,000 deaths."

Using primarily CIJ and UN World Health Organization data, I have concluded that, as of April 2006, upwards of 450,000 people had died. An assessment of this work was offered at the time by the member of the GAO panel most experienced working in Darfur, Francesco Checchi of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Checchi declared of my estimate that it is "'mathematically correct' and 'sufficiently legitimate' to establish a high-end count".

Why should we care about credible estimates for either a lower or upper range? Without a solid lower estimate of the sort provided by Hagan and Palloni in their Science article, there was no real corrective to previously common news misreporting of "tens of thousands of deaths in Darfur". But without a credible upper estimate of human mortality in Darfur we risk seeing a reprise of Rwanda, where mortality was underestimated in ways that worked to sustain international paralysis in the face of a cataclysm of human destruction that claimed some 800,000 lives.

400,000 deaths in Darfur is a fully credible estimate. If not demonstrable fact, it is far more than mere "opinion".

Darfur: Report Finds China More Willing to Pressure Sudan

From VOA

A report from a Geneva-based research group says China appears more willing to pressure Sudan over its policy in the troubled Darfur region and that the 2008 Beijing Olympics may be a factor. Yet the group cautions that rights groups should not declare victory yet. For VOA, Nick Wadhams has more from Nairobi.

The passage late last month of a U.N. Security Council resolution to send 26,000 United Nations and African Union peacekeepers to Darfur was seen as a sign that China was at last exerting its influence to get Khartoum to allow foreign troops.

Rights groups credited their "Genocide Olympics Campaign" with this victory and China's vote to approve the U.N. force. The campaign has suggested that the 2008 Beijing Olympics and China's image would be tainted because of China's support for Sudan.

But the author of the Small Arms Survey report, Daniel Large, argues that international advocates should not be quick to claim credit. China could just as easily change course once the Olympics are over.

"While Hollywood was quick to claim credit for China's apparent change of tack on Darfur, I think we should remember that signs of change were visible before the so-called 'Genocide Olympics Campaign' started in earnest," said Large. "So I think we should set these issues in context and we should be wary of having a short time frame in praising progress or success or failure."

China sells arms to Sudan and is heavily invested in its oil industry. As a result, Beijing has been seen as key in pressuring Khartoum to stop the slaughter in Darfur, where some 200,000 people have died in four years of fighting.

Sudan and China have been allies since the 1990s, and China had previously blocked international efforts to punish the Sudanese government over Darfur. The Small Arms Survey's report says China may be taking a more pragmatic approach now.

Large points out that Sudan is only one part of China's move to invest more heavily - both politically and economically - across the African continent.

And he says China's desire to play a bigger role on the global stage may also be a factor.

"When it's conducting its diplomacy we should remember that this is not a question entirely of economic interest or oil, China's political difference, politically with America matters and its economic interest in Sudan have not been the sole consideration behind its diplomacy," noted Large.

The Small Arms Survey concludes that international pressure on China may be a promising avenue to ease the continuing crisis in Darfur. Yet its policy is still officially one of non-interference.

Darfur: Rwanda Defends General Over Rights Abuses

From Reuters

Rwanda on Tuesday defended a general in line to become deputy commander of a new peacekeeping force in Darfur who has come under scrutiny at the United Nations over accusations of human rights abuses.

A Brussels-based Rwandan exile group has accused General Karenzi Karake of supervising extra-judicial killings of civilians before and after Tutsi-led rebels took power in Rwanda following the country's 1994 genocide.

The African Union has approved Karake as deputy commander for the joint U.N.-AU force for Sudan's violence-plagued Darfur region, leaving the world body in a quandary over his fitness to serve a leadership role in the international force.

Rwanda's Foreign Ministry dismissed allegations by the exile group, the United Democratic Forces, against Karake.

"The baseless allegations ... can only be construed as a desperate attempt by the organisation to tarnish Rwanda's image and to derail efforts at stabilising peace in Sudan," it said.

Karake's appointment was well-deserved and accusations he masterminded the assassination of numerous politicians were "a mere fabrication" that "should be treated with the contempt it deserves", the Foreign Ministry statement added.

The United Nations has asked international human rights groups to submit any information they have on Karake, 46, to discover whether there is any basis to the allegations.

The Rwandan statement lambasted the group accusing him as "an amalgamation of extremist fugitives known for their genocide ideology and hostility against the Government".

Another accusation against Karake, that he supervised mass killings of civilian refugees in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was "far-fetched", the ministry said.

"The allegation that the Rwandan army committed mass killings of civilians in DR Congo is part of the ongoing campaign to tarnish its image orchestrated by the (former) genocide regime and its friends," it added.

Rwanda fields some 2,000 of 7,000 AU troops now in Darfur, and is proud of its peacekeeping role.

"Rwanda can neither be intimidated or tempted to abandon an important exercise of peace support to a sister African country like the Sudan by the likes of UDF," it added.

"Rwanda's role in peacekeeping efforts is increasingly appreciated by the international community. ... Major-General Karake is a well-trained and experienced senior officer who has ably served in various senior command staff roles in the Rwanda Defence Forces and rightly deserves the post."

Sudan: Gov't to Lift Immunity for Police

From Reuters

Sudan has issued new legal decrees stripping police accused of crimes of previously held immunity from prosecution, the government said on Tuesday.

"The police director general issued a decree ... granting permission for individuals of the police force to be tried for infractions, guaranteeing speedy (legal) proceedings, and denying immunity to criminal perpetrators," an Interior Ministry statement seen by Reuters said on Tuesday.

Abdel Moneim Osman Taha, an official in the government's human rights advisory council, said the police force issued formal decrees last month to guarantee fair legal proceedings to police accused of criminal conduct.

Taha said additional decrees also addressed humanitarian treatment of detained civilians as well as the issue of international observers operating within Sudan.

"The decrees talk about ... the facilitation of the work of international observers," he said, adding that some 70 observer bodies currently operate in Sudan, most of which are in Darfur.

U.N. rights bodies have criticised Sudan's laws, which provide immunity from prosecution for police and army officers accused of crimes.

Darfur: The U.S. Must Act - Right Now

An editorial from The New Republic

Here we go again. "The coming weeks and months," explained U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in late July, "will be a crucial period in the quest for peace in Darfur." He is right. But so was the U.N. official who told a Washington Post reporter in July 2004--as it slowly dawned on the world that a genocide was underway in Darfur--that "[t]he next few months will be a moment of truth for Sudan." So was Kofi Annan when he declared on the New York Times op-ed page in April 2005, "Time is running out for the people of Sudan"--and when, 17 months later, he informed the U.N. Security Council that "the tragedy in Darfur has reached a critical moment."

For the last four years, Darfur has known only crucial periods and critical moments. Through it all, as the diplomats in New York debated, two things remained constant: The killing never stopped. And the help they spoke of never arrived.

Now another key juncture has appeared, in the form of a U.N. resolution--ratified late last month--providing for a joint United Nations-African Union force to deploy to Darfur and protect civilians. On the surface, this would seem to be a moment for optimism. The resolution would increase the number of troops patrolling Darfur from just 7,000 to 26,000; and, unlike an August 2006 resolution that also called for the deployment of U.N. troops, this one was not immediately rejected by Khartoum. What's more, on the heels of the U.N. resolution came news that representatives of various Darfuri rebel groups had managed to unite around common negotiating positions--a necessary, though not sufficient, precondition to peace talks between the insurgents and the Sudanese government.

We wish we could say these developments augured an end--finally--to the Darfur genocide. But the reality is that this crucial moment will, in all likelihood, conclude no differently from all the others. Everyone who has paid even scant attention to Darfur over the years knows that the Sudanese authorities will use every means at their disposal to slow the arrival of additional forces. Already this game has begun anew, with Khartoum seeking to complicate the international community's efforts by insisting that most peacekeepers sent to Darfur be African. Even under a best-case scenario, even in the absence of whatever new roadblocks Sudan's leaders devise, it would take many months before the international force in Darfur could possibly reach 26,000 troops.

This delay is central to Sudan's strategy. For, as the United Nations goes about the lengthy process of preparing a force--and as political negotiations between Khartoum and Darfuri rebels drag out, as they likely will given the gulf that separates the two sides--the gruesome work of genocide can go on, just as it has through all the crucial periods and critical moments of the past four years. And not only the killing and rape and destruction: In an ominous development suggesting that the genocide is now entering its final phase, reports have surfaced of Chadian Arabs crossing the border into Darfur to settle land once owned by African tribesmen. As many as 30,000 migrants, mostly Arabs, have recently arrived in Sudan from Chad. The longer peacekeepers take to deploy in substantial numbers, the more time Khartoum and its local allies have to permanently alter Darfur's demography.

Speed, then, is essential. Yet speed--as Darfuris, Bosnians, Rwandans, and Kosovars can all attest--is not exactly a strong suit of the United Nations. That is where America comes in. For there to be any chance of peace in Darfur, the United States and its allies must do what the United Nations, by its very nature, cannot: use every manner of coercion--including the credible threat of military force--to push Khartoum toward admitting peacekeepers immediately and accepting a quick and reasonable resolution to negotiations with rebels.

Is this a long shot? Absolutely. But, save for an outright nato invasion of Darfur--an option we favor, but for which there is simply no political will at the moment--an accelerated U.N. deployment backed by American threats may be the best course available. At the very least, we must try to make it work, and soon. Because the day is fast approaching when the Africans of Darfur will be out of crucial periods and critical moments forever.

Darfur: Sudan Surrounds, Attacks Volatile Camp

From Reuters

Sudanese forces surrounded and attacked Darfur's most volatile camp on Tuesday to flush out rebels they say are behind recent attacks on police, an army source and camp residents said.

The move on Kalma camp, home to 90,000 people, follows two attacks in the past week on police posts in South Darfur, one near Kalma and the other inside al-Salam camp. One policeman was killed and eight injured.

"At 6 a.m. the government of Sudan moved 2,000 soldiers to surround the camp -- army, police and border intelligence," said Abu Sharrad, a spokesman for Kalma camp.

Sharrad, who called Reuters from inside the camp, said government forces had opened fire but it was unclear if anyone was killed or injured.

"We still cannot tell. They are still surrounding the camp," he added.

An army source said those who attacked the police posts were believed to be in Kalma camp, where rebels have previously taken refuge.

"This is an administrative, organizational operation to restore internal security," he said, adding the army was not involved, only police forces.

Kalma camp is one of Darfur's most volatile.

Government offices were torched and officials expelled from the camp in 2005. Last year frustrated camp residents rioted, looting an African Union police base in the camps and hacking to death their Sudanese translator.

Darfur: UN Accuses Sudan Militia of Mass Abduction and Rape

From Reuters - The report is here [PDF]

The United Nations' human rights office on Tuesday accused forces allied with Sudan's government of mass abduction and rape of women and girls in Darfur, acts it said could constitute war crimes.

Its latest report, based on testimony from victims and witnesses, called on Khartoum to investigate reports that about 50 women were forced into "sexual slavery" after an attack on the rebel-held town of Deribat in South Darfur's Jebel Marra region last December.

The abductees, who included many children, were held for about one month, and beaten and raped repeatedly, often in front of each other, the report from the office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said.

"Witnesses indicated that the abduction, rape and other human rights violations that continued throughout the period were committed by the same group of men who conducted the actual attack," it said.

The report concluded that the Sudanese government bore responsibility for the abuses committed by the official Popular Defense Forces (PDF) militia and the Abu Gasim faction. Sudan's army had provided air and ground support for the raids which resulted in 36 civilian deaths.

The U.N. report named three men as possibly sharing criminal responsibility for leading the attacks on Deribat, and the abductions and sexual abuse.

"A series of violations have been committed that constitute both violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Some of these may also constitute war crimes", it said.

"The government should issue immediate clear instructions to all troops under its command including PDF and other militias that rape and other forms of sexual violence will not be tolerated, that they constitute war crimes," it continued.

An estimated 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in the vast western region in 2003.

Sudan denies mass rapes in Darfur. On Monday Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi said that reports by international rights groups on abuses were "criminal."

"All reports...about genocide and mass rape are frivolous and obviated by malice," he told Reuters. "They are executing policies of other nations like the United States ... against Sudan."

The U.N. report said a "pattern of mass abduction" which began with the Darfur conflict, appeared to be ongoing. The report covers a six-month period ending in May 2007.

The victims in Deribat, who were mainly from the Fur tribe, may have been targeted because the Fur community in Jebel Marra has been perceived as sympathetic to Sudan Liberation Army rebels who stayed outside the 2006 Darfur peace deal, it said.

Jebel Marra region is a stronghold of Abdul Wahed Mohammed el-Nur, leader of a faction of one of the Darfur rebel groups.

Darfur: 'Militia Leader' Warns UN

From Al Jazeera - via POTP [Video is also available on YouTube]

A Sudanese tribal leader accused of being at the centre of the conflict in Darfur has said that United Nations peacekeepers could face stiff resistance in the region.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall, Sheikh Musa Hilal said that he would support the presence of UN troops if they are being deployed to stabilise Darfur, but things would be very different if they have what he calls a "colonial agenda".

"If those troops are coming with a colonial agenda, then they will face resistance, absolutely. The people will not accept that kind of humiliation," he said.

The leader of the Um Jalul tribe of Mahamid Arabs is wanted by the United States which says he is the leader of the Janjawid militia, accused of "heinous crimes" against Darfur's black population.

Witnesses have said that he personally led an attack on the town of Tawila in 2004, in which 500 fighters massacred most of the male population, raped woman and abducted or killed the children.

But at his remote camp in the north of the region, with little visible security around him, he said there is no truth to the claims.

"This is a false accusation. Fur [An ethnic African tribe] villages and Arab villages are right next to each other and sometimes mixed in the same village," Hilal said.

"There are no pure Arabs or pure Africans her, we are all mixed people, and that means we are not racists."

However, Alex de Waal, programme director at the US-based Social Service Research Council and the co-author of Darfur:A Short History of a Long War, told Al Jazeera that Hilal was one of the "major mobilisers" of the Janjawid militia.

"His personal role is at yet unsubstantiated, the US government accuses him of having command responsibility and having been personally present when a number of massacres were committed," he said.

"But the International Criminal Court has not yet issued any indictment against him."

Hilal admitted that his tribe has aligned with the predominantly Arab government and took up arms against the Darfur rebels, which he says are in the pay of the West.

"They are just instruments of foreign aims," he said. "They are carrying out a mission in which they are not the decision-makers."

The US state department has placed a travel ban on the tribal leader and ordered his assets frozen.

Hilal said that such sanctions against a man who does not even have electricity and running water are ridiculous. He laughed when asked how many banks had frozen his accounts.

""All the banks in the world, Swiss and American and all," he said.

International organisations estimate that 200,000 have died and more than 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Khartoum accusing it of marginalising the remote region.

Khartoum, which puts the death toll at 9,000, mobilised militia to quell the revolt.

De Waal said that the UN forces, that will be deployed in the next few months to bolster 7,000 African Union peacekeepers already in the region, will have to deal with Hilal and other Arab militia leaders whatever crimes they are alleged to have committed.

"They cannot be excluded from a political settlement in Darfur, they cannot be either targeted by the UN for military action or ignored, they have to be part of the peace process," he said.

Chad: U.N. Chief Wants Backing for Force

From the AP

The U.N. secretary-general urged the Security Council to back a new international mission that would deploy European and U.N. forces in Chad and the Central African Republic to protect civilians trying to escape violence.

Since the Security Council visited Sudan and Chad in June 2006, the U.N. has been talking about deploying international police and troops to the two impoverished countries on the volatile border with Darfur.

With Deby‘s approval and the EU‘s agreement last month to start planning for a possible 3,000-strong peacekeeping mission, the pieces finally appear to be falling into place.

• a military force made up of EU troops capable of long-range patrols and equipped to respond robustly to hostile action;

• and a broad U.N. presence including up to 300 international police who would train and advise the new Chadian police unit, military liaison officers, and experts in human rights, civil affairs and the rule of law.

He said deployment of a 26,000-strong joint African Union-U.N. force in Darfur, which the council has already authorized, along with deployment of forces in Chad and the Central African Republic "would have a material impact on the security situation in the region."

The report said that while the number of Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad has stabilized at about 236,000, the number of internally displaced Chadians now exceeds 170,000 — an increase of nearly 80,000 since December.

In the Central African Republic, there are currently 30,000 internally displaced in the northeast and 2,500 Sudanese refugees, Ban said.

The Central African Republic‘s President Francois Bozize has requested peacekeepers in the northeast to secure the border with Chad and Darfur, Ban said.

Darfur: Supporters' Actions Looking More Like Willful Neglect

An op-ed by John Morlino in the San Francisco Chronicle

Nothing, however, demonstrates the failure of Darfur advocacy leaders more clearly than their blind allegiance to the Bush administration, epitomized by their refusal to take on the president for his not-so-secret intelligence-sharing arrangement with the perpetrators of this genocide. Despite years of well-documented accounts of (what has recently been described as daily) post-9/11 huddling between the CIA and its Sudanese counterparts - the most brazen being the attendance of U. S. operatives at a June conference of African's spy agencies, held in Khartoum - activists have steadfastly refused to highlight this smoking gun.

By rejecting the only hand that had a chance of galvanizing the avalanche of public outrage needed to obliterate the administration's hypocrisy, activists left an untold number of Darfuri lives on the table.

Make no mistake, the government of Sudan has already accomplished its objective. By eviscerating the social fabric of an enormous swath of territory, it has retained its power, lined its pockets and devastated a proud people for years to come.

The last breath of hope that remains for the brave souls who have thus far survived comes down to this: humility, courage and truth. Ours, not theirs. Accordingly, anyone concerned about the well-being of Darfur refugees needs to acknowledge that, in every way, we have failed to protect them. And for that, we must apologize to them - not 10 years from now - but today.

And, then, from this day forward, anything we say or do on their behalf must be painted the color of truth - meaning every person or entity responsible for our unconscionable failure must be held publicly accountable. Until that happens, there is no hope for what is left of Darfur, no hope for the targets of future genocides ... and no hope for ourselves.

Darfur: Muslims Plan UK Fundraiser

From the Scotsman

A MUSLIM version of Live 8 is to be staged to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

British-based Muslims are hoping for a sell-out at London's Wembley Stadium on 21 October.

They also said it was "shameful" that Muslims do not get as concerned about the bloodshed in Sudan - branded "genocide" by the US president, George Bush - as they do about other conflicts such as Iraq.

Jehangir Malik, the UK national fundraising manager of Islamic Relief, said: "We are going for our own equivalent of Live 8. We are going for a concert at the end of Ramadan to celebrate Eid.

"We should hopefully see a sell-out and it will be a milestone."

The event will be headlined by singer Sami Yusuf (formerly Cat Stevens), and while targeting Muslims, it is hoped that members of different communities will attend.

There will also be an information blitz throughout Ramadan calling for people to "rise to the challenge of helping Darfur" with messages sent to mosques and imams for Friday sermons.

Saifuddin Ahmed, a spokesman for Muslim Aid, said: "The Muslim community [worldwide] must match the level of response that our government has done."

He said it is "quite shameful" that Muslim nations' funding has been limited in comparison with others.

"Natural disasters are much easier to raise money for than man-made disasters," Mr Malik added.

Darfur: Durbin Urges People to Action

From SJ-R.COM

As the U.S. Senate’s assistant majority leader, Dick Durbin says he’s used his position to shed light on the atrocities of the genocide in the western Sudan region of Darfur.

In meetings President Bush holds with the Springfield Democrat and other congressional leaders, Durbin says, he’s tried to put pressure on Bush to act on the turmoil in the African country, which has left more than 400,000 people dead.

In a recent speech at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Bush outlined economic sanctions to be taken against Sudan if that government continues to fail to honor peacekeeping agreements.

“The net result of his speech at the Holocaust Museum and the follow-through was a resolution before the (United Nations) Security Council in the last three weeks. It’s a resolution to find and both to send 25,000 U.N. peacekeeping forces to Darfur to join up with the African Union forces,” Durbin said.

However, you don’t have to be a U.S. senator to take a stand against the Darfur genocide, Durbin told an audience of nearly 100 people in Springfield Monday evening.

Durbin was the keynote speaker during an event to raise awareness about the genocide in Darfur held at the Dove Conference Center in the Prairie Heart Institute.

Among other steps, he said, people can check whether their mutual funds support the Sudanese government and they can chip in to buy solar cookers for refugees.

The Springfield Jewish Community Relations Council and the Never Again! Save Darfur Coalition hosted the event, which was designed to promote the sale of such cookers for refugees in Darfur and Chad.

Int'l Justice: Trial of Liberia's Taylor Delayed to January

From Reuters

Judges on Monday postponed until January the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor as lawyers argued over whether victims of the atrocities in Sierra Leone need be called to testify.

Taylor is accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation in a quest for diamonds during the civil war in Sierra Leone.

His chief defense counsel, Courtenay Griffiths, said he saw no reason why victims of the war need testify unless the prosecution was trying to make an "emotional impact." Prosecutors replied that their testimony was required.

Taylor, 59, boycotted the opening of his trial in June in a dispute over the resources allocated to his defense, prompting weeks of legal wrangling and repeated delays.

More funds were made available to Taylor and a new defense team was appointed last month.

The team requested a delay until January to prepare the case. "Time allowed now will help reduce the length of the trial in due course and save money," Griffiths said in his plea.

"In the chamber's view, the period of four months is indeed a reasonable time ... to grapple with a complicated case," said Judge Julia Sebutinde, who noted the prosecution had not opposed the request.

Taylor, 59, attended the hearing, wearing a double-breasted grey suit with gold cufflinks. His lawyer said the former president, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, was also anxious to begin his trial as soon as possible.

Griffiths said there were some 40,000 pages of material submitted by prosecutors to be examined, and 50,000 pages of material from Taylor's personal archives had surfaced in Monrovia which could be crucial to the case.

But bringing victims to The Hague to testify was unnecessary, he said.

"No one is denying that horrific acts were committed ... the question is: were those horrible things done at the behest of or in the knowledge of this defendant?" Griffiths asked.

"Let's get rid of all this emotional baggage which the prosecutor is seeking to bring before the court," he told journalists afterwards.

In Sierra Leone, a generation of civilian amputees -- their hands or legs hacked off by rebels -- are a painful reminder of the cruelty of the conflict.

Drugged rebels and militia fighters, often only children themselves, killed, raped and maimed men, women and children.

Prosecutors say in the indictment that Taylor tried to gain control of Sierra Leone's mineral wealth, particularly its diamond mines, and destabilize the Freetown government to boost his own influence throughout West Africa.

The indictment focuses on abuses between 1996 and 2002, and catalogues the horrific practices of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, who it says Taylor supported and supplied.

Taylor's trial is being held in The Hague because of fears it could spur instability if held in Sierra Leone. On Saturday, the country held its first elections since the departure of U.N. peacekeepers two years ago. The trial will resume on January 7.

Darfur: Armed Men Attack Police in Refugee Camp

From Reuters

Armed raiders killed a policeman and wounded four others in an attack on a refugee camp in Darfur, adding to fears about the safety of displaced people the war-torn Sudanese region, officials said on Monday.

The attackers fired on a police post at the al-Salam camp in the south of Darfur, the base for thousands of people who have fled their homes during more than four years of revolt.

"This happened yesterday in al-Salam camp," deputy governor of South Darfur state Farrah Mustafa told Reuters from Darfur. "They killed one of our police and injured four."

Mustafa said investigations were continuing into who carried out the attack. He said 26 armed men attacked the post and tried unsuccessfully to steal police vehicles.

International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing Khartoum of marginalising the remote region.

Khartoum, which puts the death toll at 9,000, mobilised militia to quell the revolt. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for a junior government minister and militia leader accused of conspiring in war crimes.

The world's largest humanitarian operation is active in the region, but aid workers complain a lack of security has hampered efforts and left some 500,000 people out of reach.

Aid officials said it did not appear the camp residents were at risk during the attack, but said they were concerned at the growing presence of arms and insecurity in the region.

"It does not look like that attack was aimed against the civilians in the camp," said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"We are concerned by the increasing number of attacks... and the presence of armed men in IDP (internally displaced people) camps," he added.

The conflict began 4-1/2 years ago in the north of the arid region, but the spread of weapons to other tribes in the south over the past 18 months has increased tensions in these previously safer areas.

Mustafa said this was not the first such attack.

"Five days ago at another station near Kalma Camp (in south Darfur) there was an attack ... they injured four of our police there," he added.

On Sunday, also in South Darfur, a convoy of six commercial vehicles and other cars was attacked about 30 km (19 miles) outside ed-Daieen town in the east of the state, the commissioner of the town told Reuters by telephone.

The attackers were probably rebels or bandits, he said, as they were lightly armed, carrying only two rifles.

The area has witnessed heavy fighting between rebels and militias over the past two weeks.

Since a May 2006 peace deal signed by only one of three rebel groups, the Darfur insurgents have splintered into more than a dozen factions.

But with U.N. and African Union-mediated talks due to start by October, the rebels are trying to unify.

On Sunday a newly formed group, the United Front for Liberation and Development, said its leadership was returning from Eritrea to Darfur to unite their military forces.

"All the leadership council will move to the field in Darfur. The aim is to finish uniting all the armies into one group," UFLD spokesman Abdel Aziz told reporters in the Eritrean capital.

Darfur: Rebel Alliance to Unite Armed Wings

From AFP

An Asmara-based umbrella group of Darfur rebel movements announced on Monday it would return to the war-torn western Sudanese region to unify its armed wings into a single force.

Representatives of the United Front for Liberation and Development (UFLD) - an alliance of five factions formed last month - promised that their troops would work to protect aid workers and non-government organisations (NGOs).

"The leaders are going back to Darfur to unify all the armies into one group," UFLD official Abdel Aziz told reporters in the Eritrean capital Asmara.

"They will be protecting civilians and creating a secure area for NGOs doing their work in Darfur," he added.

The move comes two weeks after most Darfur rebel factions met in Arusha, Tanzania for talks sponsored by mediators from the United Nations and African Union to hammer out a common platform ahead of peace talks with Khartoum.

However Abdel Aziz stressed that final settlement negotiations with the Sudanese government could only take place if Suleiman Jamous, a veteran rebel who has been confined to a hospital and seen as a key negotiator, is released.

"No negotiation will take place unless Suleiman Jamous has been released," said Abdel Aziz.

According to the United Nations, Khartoum has agreed to let Jamous travel abroad for treatment. The 62-year-old rebel, a member of the Sudan Liberation Movement, is expected in Kenya.

According to UN estimates, at least 200 000 people have died from the combined effect of war and famine since the start of the Darfur conflict and some two million have been displaced.

Some experts say the toll is higher but Khartoum puts the figure at 9 000.

The civil war broke out when rebel groups complaining of marginalisation by Khartoum launched a rebellion, which was brutally repressed by the Sudanese government and its proxy militia, the Janjaweed.

Darfur: Arab-Led Rebels Say They Too Are Victimised

From Reuters

Arab-led Darfur rebels accuse Sudan's government of fomenting ethnic tensions in the war-torn region as a "divide and rule" tactic and insist the portrayal of Arabs as linked to the feared Janjaweed militia is wrong.

The United Revolutionary Force Front (URFF), a little-known Arab-led group opposed to the Khartoum government, says government troops have increased attacks on its positions in Darfur in recent weeks, including a raid on Aug. 11 in which the group says it captured 12 government soldiers.

"The government of Sudan is trying to separate the Arabs and the Africans, to put them on two sides against each other," URFF Secretary-General Mohammad Ibrahim Mohammad Brima told Reuters in neighbouring Chad.

Darfur's war pits local rebel groups drawn largely from African farming tribes against government forces and allied militia known as the Janjaweed, whose mainly Arab members are accused of bloody attacks on villagers that have forced many of Darfur's 2.5 million displaced from their homes.

International experts say 200,000 have been killed in Darfur since 2003, although Khartoum says only 9,000 have died.

"Yes Khartoum has created militias -- but other ethnic groups are involved as well as Arabs ... Arabs are part of Darfur as well, and we are suffering just as the others," Mohammad Brima said.

He said Arabs also fell victim to violence.

"We are not beside the militia -- we are against anybody that attacks the people of Darfur ... we are against these people, even if they are Arabs," he said. "The people of Darfur are one nation and they should not be separated."

Mohammad Brima said the URFF did not wish to fight, as other Darfur rebel groups have, but had been left with little choice.

"We still believe that the gun will not solve the problem," he said. "But the government of Sudan believes it can only win by war, so we must be ready to defend ourselves."

The URFF says government forces have attacked its positions in Darfur three times in the past few weeks, most recently on Aug. 11 in the village of Souja, near Wadi-Saleh in west Darfur, where the rebel group captured army soldiers for the first time.

A relatively unknown member of the growing ranks of Darfur rebel groups, the URFF says the upsurge in attacks is evidence that Khartoum is beginning to feel their group is a threat.

Mohammad Brima declined to say how many fighters were in the movement or what its military capabilities were.

Founded in 2004, it says it was not invited to peace talks because it had not been engaged in active combat -- until now.

But its leaders claim support from key rebel groups such as the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and say its top commanders include people from non-Arab clans including the Zaghawa people -- who span the Sudan-Chad border and dominate Chadian politics.

Darfur: "I Cannot Wait to See a Peaceful Darfur"

From IRIN

Fatuma Abdalah fled her home near the Sudan-Chad border two years ago when her village was attacked and the family home destroyed. Now living in El Fasher town, North Darfur, the mother of six talks about her daily struggles and hopes for peace in the conflict-ridden region.

"When we were brought here we had suffered a lot, our homes had been burnt. We were displaced from our homes, then picked up by aeroplane and dropped here in 2005. We came from Tiina near Chad. Others fled to Chad.

"My husband has no job and is very sick. Even if there may be a job for him to do he is not well enough. Now it is only me struggling to feed our family. I do various odd jobs like washing and cleaning work in homes around here. Life is hard.

"We need peace in Darfur. We do not want the Sudanese to die; we do not want to see Sudanese people displaced. I just pray the government works hard to bring peace in our region so that we can return to our homes and be reunited with our relatives.

"I have never returned home and it will be hard for me to go back. If we have peace, then I will go back, but if there is no peace and the government tells us to return, I will not go.

"I am here with my children. I have six and my co-wife has four. It is we the women who are providing for our family, the children’s fees and food for the entire family.

"Still it is not safe here in El Fasher. You hear shooting here and there. We live in fear. We hear of a UN peacekeeping force about to come and ongoing peace negotiations. I cannot wait to see a peaceful Darfur, peace from west to east and north to south."

Darfur: UN Mulls Allegations Against Proposed Deputy Commander

From Reuters

The United Nations is seriously considering allegations of human rights violations against a Rwandan general, nominated as deputy commander for the new U.N.-African Union force in Darfur, a U.N. official said on Saturday.

The African Union has approved Rwandan Maj. Gen. Karenzi Karake for the post but the United Nations has not yet confirmed it, despite pressure from Rwanda, which fields some 2,000 of the 7,000 AU troops now in Darfur.

"We are aware of these allegations and we take them seriously," the U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are consulting with the African Union and the government of Rwanda on the matter."

The joint U.N.-African Union operation aims to protect civilians in Sudan's western Darfur region, where more than 2.5 million people have lost their homes and an estimated 200,000 have died in the past four years.

The Brussels-based United Democratic Forces, an opposition group, has accused Karake of supervising extra judicial killings of civilians before and after the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front rebels took power in Kigali following the genocide. In 1994 militant Hutus killed some 800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsis.

Rwanda's U.N. ambassador, Joseph Nsengimana, was quoted on the allAfrica.com Web site as saying that those raising the allegations had simply run out of ideas to complain about.

"The whole world and the diplomats at the U.N., the Sudanese government and people of Darfur have appreciated the role that our troops in Darfur have played," Nsengimana said.

"Why can't these people develop in their thinking because they seem to be out of touch with the way Rwanda is changing?" he was quoted as telling the BBC's Great Lakes service.

Darfur: US Says Conflict is Still a Genocide

From the Sudan Tribune

The US has reiterated its position on branding the Darfur conflict as genocide.

“We certainly do continue to treat it as genocide” the US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters today.

Yesterday Britain’s advertising regulator has criticized the Save Darfur coalition for claiming that 400,000 people have died in Darfur, saying the claim was unsubstantiated.

McCormack said that he does not have the latest estimates of the people who died in Darfur.

However he described the Darfur crisis as a “tragedy of monumental and historic proportions”.

Darfur: Row Over Number of Deaths

From the BBC

The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council told the BBC inflated figures are used to justify Western inference.

The UK's advertising watchdog recently said that the claim, made by the Save Darfur Coalition in an advert, should have been stated as opinion, not fact.

Most experts put the figure as at least 200,000; Sudan's government says 9,000.

The Save Darfur Coalition has said it accepted the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruling, but argued in a statement that "history tells us that the size of genocides are rarely understood contemporarily", Reuters news agency reports.

More than 2m people have been left homeless in Darfur since fighting broke out in 2003 when rebels took up arms.

The US says that genocide is taking place in the region - although a UN investigation team sent to Sudan said that while war crimes had been committed, there had been no intent to commit genocide.

A 26,000-strong UN and African Union peacekeeping force is to be deployed to the region by the end of the year.

The Save Darfur Coalition used an estimate of deaths in Darfur from the research of John Hagan from Northwestern University in the United States, which specified that the figure of 400,000 was a high-end estimate based on reports of those dead and missing.

It then quoted the figure in a campaign in the UK's national press, which was challenged by the European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, a group funded by businesses in Sudan which aims, in part, is to challenge "questionable coverage of Sudan".

The ASA says it does not dispute that there are atrocities happening in Darfur.

"We don't want to quibble over such a serious issue but we're dealing with the advertising codes which say if you want to state something as fact you've got to have the robust and rigorous evidence to back it up," ASA's Matthew Wilson told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"Unfortunately because there are so many different studies with so many different figures attributed to the death toll you cannot state one as fact over the other," he said.

Mr Hagan agreed that there was divided opinion over Darfur's death toll.

"What the adjudication from the [ASA] says is that there is a division of views and a division of opinions on this matter and that is undoubtedly true and I think it probably has almost certainly been true of every genocide in history," Mr Hagan told the BBC's Africa Network

"It's conceivable that Save Darfur could have said a little bit more about the diversity of estimates and opinions about death in Darfur, but as I think it is increasingly clear... there's a great deal of support for the position that Save Darfur has taken."

But David Hoile of the European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council said it was dangerous to exaggerate figures.

"You get groups in Washington DC who are using very distorted accusations in an attempt to get yet another military intervention in yet another oil-rich Muslim country," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

He said the real focus now should be on peace talks.

"This thing can only be solved by Darfurians, it can only be made worse by outside intervention by people such as the Save Darfur Campaign," Mr Hoile said.

"When you want to move towards a peace process you have to start deconstructing propaganda and deconstructing the imagery that is prolonging the conflict.

"Without that propaganda deconstruction you will have extremists on both sides who want to carry on the conflict."

A post by Alex de Waal

How many people have died in Darfur and what is the value of this information? The recent ruling by the British Advertising Standards Authority that Save Darfur was guilty of misrepresenting the figure of 400,000 deaths as “fact” rather than, in its view, as “opinion,” has ignited a controversy that has long haunted advocacy around humanitarian disaster.

The offending advertisement by Save Darfur and Britain’s Aegis Trust read: “SLAUGHTER IS HAPPENING IN DARFUR. YOU CAN HELP END IT. In 2003, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir moved to crush opposition by unleashing vicious armed militias to slaughter entire villages of his own citizens. After three years, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed.”

There are two parts to the case. The first is that the figure of 400,000 deaths during the crisis is an upper-limit estimate not supported by the best studies, and therefore cannot be regarded as “fact” but rather as a disputed interpretation. This is the major concern of this posting.

The second is the implication that the deaths are wholly “slaughter” by the Sudan government and its militias, rather than predominantly due to hunger and disease. While such famine deaths may have their ultimate cause in the war, and especially the government’s conduct of the war during the extreme phase of 2003-04, there is an important difference between violent killing and death by these other causes. As Sam Dealey noted in his August 12 opinion column in the New York Times, different policy prescriptions follow: stopping massacres demands a different response to stopping hunger and disease. There is no disagreement on this: nobody claims that all, or even a majority, of the dead are killed in violence.

The authoritative overview of mortality in Darfur up to late 2005 is the evaluation by the U.S. General Accounting Office. This exercise asked a panel of experts to examine the different mortality surveys done. They did this task with a remarkable thoroughness and professionalism, requesting those who had undertaken the surveys for their data, and then replicating the methods to test the findings. They used a high standard of peer review criteria. The studies had to be replicable. All the studies involved making assumptions, and these assumptions were varied to explore the range of outcomes that came with varying each one, which in turn would assess the robustness of each study’s methods.

There is a great deal of science and statistics involved in the estimation of mortality. There is also good judgement based on experience, which is where selecting and examining assumptions becomes important.

Darfur: Israel Turns Away Refugees

From the BBC

Israel will in future turn away all illegal entrants from Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur, a top official says.

The policy applies to new arrivals only, while some 500 people from Darfur already in Israel will be permitted to stay for "humanitarian reasons".

Israel is struggling to stem the flow of Africans entering the country via its southern border with Egypt.

Overnight, Israel handed 48 Sudanese people back to Egypt, according to Egyptian security officials.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Egypt accepted the refugees for "very pressing humanitarian reasons" but such a move "would not be repeated again".

...

Israeli spokesman David Baker said on Sunday: "The policy of returning back anyone who enters Israel illegally will pertain to everyone, including those from Darfur."

Last month, Israel's interior ministry said a limited number of Darfuris would be allowed to remain in Israel as it was "clear that they have suffered the most".

As many as 50 asylum seekers arrive in Israel each day, lured by the prospect of employment, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates.

Israel estimates that 2,800 people have entered the country illegally in recent years - nearly all were from Africa, including 1,160 from Sudan.

Uganda: Government to Consult on New Court

From the AP

The government is going to ask Ugandans countrywide to recommend measures to take against rebels and others responsible for the killings and brutality during the 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda, the internal affairs minister said.

Government negotiators and those from the rebel Lord's Resistance Army group have taken a break from peace talks taking place in the regional capital of southern Sudan, Juba, to consult their respective sides on the next item on the agenda: how to reconcile the people of northern Uganda, and how to punish those responsible for atrocities.

The talks had been scheduled to resume in July but have been delayed to allow consultations to continue.

The responses — from representatives of non-governmental organizations, human rights activists and judicial officers — will be used during the upcoming talks, said Ruhakana Rugunda, the internal affairs minister.

"In all this, we will be looking for a mechanism through which the question of impunity will be answered while at the same time achieving reconciliation," Rugunda told reporters on Sunday. "This is why it will be necessary to examine the formal criminal justice system, the traditional and cultural reconciliation processes."

Officials will solicit views in 10 towns, Rugunda said.

From IRIN

Legal proceedings against Ugandan rebel leaders may be held in a special court instead of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a government minister said on 19 August.

Ruhakana Rugunda, interior minister and head of the delegation to the talks between the government and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), said the option of a new court will be debated and consultations be held in conflict affected areas.

"We find that there is a need for a court with special status as the best legal framework that will best handle the situation," he told reporters.

"What we will be looking for is people's views on the laws that need to be put in place in order to achieve accountability; laws that need amendment; the process the LRA will have to go through in order to account and reconcile with the community," the minister added.

On 29 June, the government and LRA rebel leaders signed the third phase of a five-stage agreement aimed at ending the near 20-year long conflict.

It dealt with accountability and providing a local justice mechanism to try LRA rebel leaders and others facing charges of crimes against humanity.

"We want the outcome of the peace talks to be both acceptable locally and internationally," Rugunda said. "There is no doubt that the traditional courts will be appropriate especially for smaller crimes."

He added: "In all this we will be looking for a mechanism through which the question of impunity will be answered while at the same time achieving reconciliation."

Through the mediation of the southern Sudan government, Kampala has asked the LRA to get involved in the consultation inside Uganda, he said. It was not yet known what the response of the group would be.

Darfur: Former Rebels Say Khartoum Arming Militia

From Reuters

Former Darfur rebels accused Khartoum on Thursday of arming and training forces of a tribal militia who have killed 170 civilians in South Darfur in recent days, but the Sudanese army rejected the charge.

The Darfur conflict began 4-1/2 years ago in the north of the arid region, but the spread of weapons to other tribes in the south over the past 18 months has increased tensions in these previously safer areas.

The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) of Minni Arcua Minnawi, the only rebel faction to sign a peace deal last year, said its forces had intervened to stop attacks by the Arab Maaliya tribe and discovered the militia had support from Khartoum.

"We engaged them in battle but it was clear that they had capabilities beyond those of militia," said the faction's military spokesman Mohamed Hamid Dirbeen, who had just returned from the area, adding that the SLA had lost eight men.

Dirbeen said the Maaliya fighters wore new military uniforms and had heavy artillery and weapons provided by Khartoum.

"There is air support, planes and helicopters from the Sudanese army landing in the militia areas," he said. "They have armed and supported them," he added. He said the militia had killed 170 civilians and also stolen cattle.

A Sudanese army spokesman said the accusations were untrue.

"How can we arm militias to fight against civilians? This is not true," he said.

International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing Khartoum of marginalising the remote region.

Khartoum mobilised militia to quell the revolt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for a junior government minister and militia leader accused of conspiring in war crimes.

Dirbeen said Minnawi would continue to abide by the peace deal, but said the African Union, monitoring the shaky Darfur ceasefire, was not capable of investigating the events and urged U.N. or European Union intervention.

Since the ceasefire, the Darfur insurgents have split into more than a dozen factions. Last month, the U.N. Security Council authorised a 26,000-strong U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for the region.

Adila town, near to the clashes involving the Maaliya tribe, witnessed heavy fighting last week between another rebel faction, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the government last week.

The United Nations said it had reports the hospital in Adila had been looted and was sending medical supplies.

"A large number of the population in Adila town had left as a result of the fear of insecurity," said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the U.N. office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA).

"Despite this we know the majority have now returned."

The world's largest aid operation helps some 4.2 million in need in Darfur. But some 500,000 are out of reach because of insecurity and banditry.

Darfur: Troops Must Meet UN Standards

From Reuters

Troops pledged by African states for the new joint U.N.-African Union force in Darfur must meet U.N. standards, said Rodolphe Adada, the mission's head.

The U.N. Security Council last month authorised up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police for the war-torn region.

AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has said non-African troops are not needed for the joint mission, as African states have pledged enough soldiers.

The comments angered Darfur rebel leaders, who say a 7,000-strong AU force already in Darfur has been unable to stem the violence despite being deployed since 2004. The Sudanese government wants most peacekeepers in the new force to be African.

International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes in more than four years of revolt in Darfur.

Adada said new troop commitments by African countries had been encouraging, but what mattered was quality.

"Many African countries are ready to contribute troops and the pledges are very high, but they have to meet the standards of the United Nations," he told reporters in el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state late on Wednesday.

U.N. officials have said some African units may not have adequate equipment, especially armoured vehicles, to be part of the joint mission. Peacekeepers are generally expected to bring their own weapons and equipment.

Adada was on his first visit to North Darfur since his appointment as head of the AU mission and joint U.N.-AU operation.

The joint mission will incorporate the existing AU force of 7,000 troops, many of whom are poorly equipped and have not been paid in months because of cash-flow problems.

"Efforts are being made to solve this problem once and for all. In a few days this (pay) problem will be behind us," Adada told the AU troops in Darfur. He said his first task would be to raise the morale of the troops.

International experts estimate some 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in more than four years of fighting in Darfur. Rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the remote region.

Only one of three negotiating rebel factions, a group led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, signed a peace deal with Khartoum last year. Since then the insurgents have split into more than a dozen factions, creating chaos in Sudan's arid west.

Earlier this month the AU pay difficulties prompted Minnawi to withdraw from the joint ceasefire commission as his and the Sudanese army representatives had their pay cut.

On Wednesday Minnawi's group rejoined the commission. The AU relies on donors to fund the mission while the joint mission will be paid for directly from the U.N. budget.

Darfur: Force Should Be Based on Experience, Not Nationality

From the AP

Getting experienced peacekeeping troops quickly onto the ground in Sudan's war torn western region of Darfur is more important than just ensuring they are all African, an international human rights group said Thursday.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch wrote African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare and U.N. Undersecretary Jean-Marie Guehenno a letter cautioning that adherence to Sudan's wish for the proposed force be entirely African could delay its much needed deployment.

"The need for specialized units and support will likely require reliance on non-African countries," wrote Steve Crawshaw, the organization's advocacy director.

"The African Union and United Nations must be prepared to look elsewhere when necessary to field the most capable and timely force possible for Darfur," it added.

Konare on Sunday announced that due to the overwhelming response from the continent, no non-African forces would be needed for the force, authorized by the U.N. Security Council on July 31 to consist of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police.

HRW, however, maintained that the complex nature of the task and the marked inability of the 7,000-strong AU force currently in the country to stabilize the region points up to the need for more experienced troops.

Sudan is adamantly opposed to non-Africans playing any major role in Darfur, which has delayed the authorization of the new force for months despite mounting pressure to stop the violence that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million in the last four years.

The rights group's concerns dovetail with those of U.S. envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios, who previously said that Khartoum would have to accept non-African troops because continent does not have enough trained soldiers to fully staff the peacekeeping contingent.

Darfur: Sudan Lifts Travel Ban

From the BBC

Sudan is to allow a sick Darfur rebel chief on its wanted list to travel to Kenya for treatment, the UN says.

Suleiman Jamous has been confined to a United Nations peacekeeping base near Darfur for more than 13 months.

He needs surgery and had been threatened with arrest by Sudanese authorities if he left the UN's care.

Mr Jamous has been a key link between rebels in Darfur and humanitarian workers serving families displaced during the four-year conflict.

Some 200,000 people are believed to have died and more than 2m have been left homeless in Darfur since fighting broke out in 2003.

Mr Jamous is suffering from abdominal complications and has been cared for at a UN hospital.

"The government of Sudan has made clear that Suleiman Jamous was free to leave the hospital to undergo medical treatment and subsequently reside with his family under the condition the UN guarantee that he will not return to Darfur to fight," UN spokeswoman Michele Montas told Associated Press news agency.

She said the UN would facilitate his evacuation to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

In May last year, Mr Jamous, Sudan's Liberation Army humanitarian co-ordinator, rejected the Darfur peace deal - and was promptly detained by those rebels who did sign.

After a month the UN intervened and flew him to Kadugli for treatment.

Earlier this month, US actress Mia Farrow offered her freedom in exchange for Mr Jamous so he could attend peace talks in Tanzania.

Eight rebel factions, who did not sign last year's agreement, have since reached a common position for talks with Sudan's government.

Meanwhile, the African Union and UN special representative for Darfur, Rodolphe Adada, says peacekeeping troops pledged by African countries must meet UN standards.

Speaking on the first day of a visit to Darfur, Mr Adada said the deadline for offers of peacekeepers was the end of the month.

The UN Security Council has sanctioned the deployment of the hybrid force composed of 26,000 troops.

AU Commission Chairman Alpha Konare has said Africa will provide all of the required peacekeepers.

The UN had expected to call on Asian troops. Critics say Africa lacks enough trained troops for an effective force.

Darfur: Rebel Leader Says Force Must Include Non-Africans

From Reuters

A key Darfur rebel leader said a viable peacekeeping force for the war-torn western Sudanese region must include non-Africans and toned down his conditions for joining peace talks.

African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said in Khartoum on Sunday that troops from outside Africa were not needed for a planned joint AU/UN force as African nations had pledged enough soldiers already.

The comments angered Darfur rebel leaders who say AU troops in Darfur have been unable to stem the violence. International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes in more than four years of revolt in Darfur.

"If anybody talks about only one continent (for the force) that means it is racism and we are against that strongly," Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) Chairman and founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur told Reuters late on Tuesday night.

"I'd like Konare to behave like the leader of the African people," he said.

Nur said troops "of all colours" from all over the world should be included in the 26,000-strong force which will absorb 7,000 struggling AU forces already there.

A senior U.N. peacekeeping official earlier this month said mostly African nations had pledged infantry but key logistics and air support was lacking.

Analysts say much of this support needs to come from Western nations, which have yet to give any firm pledges of military personnel.

Nur, who has only a few troops in Darfur but commands wide popular support, refused to go to AU and U.N. mediated rebel unity meeting in Tanzania earlier this month.

He had previously said he wanted a no-fly zone and oil-for-food programme before going to any talks.

But in a positive sign Nur dropped those preconditions, saying he now wanted security in the form of U.N. troops, disarmament of militias and the removal of settlers on lands belonging to those who have fled the fighting.

"If they stop the killing of my people then that will create a more conducive environment for peace talks," he said.

Since a May 2006 peace deal signed with only one of three rebel negotiating factions, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen groups, a hurdle to restarting talks.

This month many commanders and groups agreed a common negotiating position ahead of talks to start within three months.

Darfur: Ban Plans First Trip to Sudan, Pushes for Deployment

From Reuters

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday he plans to visit Sudan soon to expedite speedy deployment of a United Nations-African Union force for Darfur.

The secretary-general did not release a date but diplomats said the trip was expected in September, before Ban needed to be back in New York to prepare for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly session late that month.

Ban spoke to reporters after his monthly lunch with 15 U.N. Security Council ambassadors. The envoys told Reuters the secretary-general also would visit Chad and Libya in his first trip to the region since taking office in January.

Asked about the Darfur force, Ban said it was the top priority issue for him and the United Nations, adding: "I will try to expedite the speedy deployment of hybrid operation forces."

He also said he intended to follow up on peace negotiations being set up between the government and rebel leaders in Darfur, which he called "encouraging."

"I am also going to step up this political dialogue with all these regional groups as well as rebel group leaders," Ban said, without elaborating.

The U.N. Security Council last month authorized up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police for Darfur, which, if deployed, would be the world's largest peacekeeping force.

The immediate problem, U.N. officials say, is finding land and materials to build housing for advance troops that were to support 7,000 soldiers currently deployed by the African Union.

The agreement came after Ban held lengthy negotiations with Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Bashir, in part over the composition of any force sent into its western region to try to end four years of conflict that has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

AU officials said enough African nations had pledged infantry troops to give the hybrid mission an African character as Sudan had demanded. But their dates of arrival are not yet confirmed and some infantry contingents need to include mechanized battalions.

But U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said, "We still need specialized units, particularly in terms of technology, communications, transportation and these can be provided by other countries ... and they are not all of them African."

No Western country to date has promised military personnel, peacekeeping officials said. China and Pakistan are considering contributing engineering units.

From AFP

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said today he planned to travel to Sudan in the near future in hopes of stepping up the deployment of a UN-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur.

"This is again a top priority issue for me and for the United Nations to implement the resolution adopted in July. I will try to expedite the speedy deployment of hybrid operation forces," Ban said.

Ban added that he would also give a push to talks between parties involved in the strife over Darfur.

In early August, representatives of Darfur’s many rebel groups gathered in the Tanzanian town of Arusha for UN- and AU-sponsored talks aimed at unifying their stance ahead of final peace negotiations with Khartoum.

"As we have seen encouraging developments result through the Arusha political negotiation, I am also going to step up the political dialogue with the regional groups as well as rebel group leaders," Ban said.

A diplomatic source told AFP that Ban’s trip could come in September, and include visits to Chad and Libya, both of which have become enmeshed in the crisis over Darfur in western Sudan.

The Sudan trip could also involve an effort to re-invigorate the January 2005 Global Peace Agreement signed between the Sudan government and rebels in the country’s south, which has in recent months shown signs of fragility.

The main aim of Ban’s trip, to hasten moving the UN-AU force into action, follows the July 31 Security Council decision to set up the joint force of 26,000 men.

The full deployment of the force is not envisaged at any rate before mid-2008.

Sudan: As Other Firms Exit, Phone Companies Enter

From Reuters

Bright yellow banners sprang up overnight along the banks of the Nile then spread along the ten-lane highways and crowded market streets of Sudan's traffic-clogged capital, Khartoum.

They were the first steps in a campaign by South Africa's MTN to stake a claim in one of Africa's last big undeveloped mobile phone markets.

Foreign investors have steered clear of Sudan in recent years, following the international uproar over the crisis in Darfur and subsequent strengthening of U.S. sanctions against Khartoum.

Britain's Rolls Royce announced plans to pull out in April, joining Germany's Siemens , Switzerland's ABB and Canada's CHC Helicopter in the queue to exit.

But the newly booming telecoms market in the oil-rich east African country has proved too tempting for mobile phone companies to resist. For them, the vast expanses of Sudan's western Darfur region are not so much a disaster zone as one more unexploited mobile phone market waiting to be tapped.

Darfur: Symbolic Torch Relay Aims to Shine Light on China

From the Washington Post

Lighting a torch at historic sites of genocide, a group of activists, actors and athletes is hoping to press China, as host of the 2008 Olympic Games, to use its influence with the government in Khartoum to stop the killing and displacement of civilians in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

"We actually think it is inconsistent for an Olympic host to be complicit in an ongoing genocide," said Jill Savitt, a human rights activist who conceived of the "Olympic Dream for Darfur" campaign.

The symbolic torch relay began Aug. 8, two miles from Darfur's border with eastern Chad, the same day the official Olympic torch relay began in Athens. The activists kept the Darfur relay secret to avoid problems in the Darfur border area.

The group is scheduled to light a flame this morning in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and to march along the route where, in 1994, about 2,500 Tutsis were massacred between a high school and a rubbish dump.

The group is being led by actress Mia Farrow and, besides Savitt, includes basketball player Ira Newble of the Cleveland Cavaliers; Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor and Sudan expert; and Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service.

Human rights campaigners accuse Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government of abetting and financing abuses by its armed forces and an allied Arab militia, the Janjaweed, and they accuse China of shielding Khartoum from international sanctions. China is a major purchaser of Sudanese oil.

"By lighting a flame on the Darfur border, we inject hope across eastern Chad and now Rwanda," Farrow said. "If we have the support of those communities who should know better, we will get the strength and inspiration to protect those places."

Speaking by telephone from Kigali yesterday, Farrow described the Darfurian refugees she met last week in Chad, saying, "They are grieving. One lifetime is not enough time to recover. Their tarps are old and leaking. People there told us they long to go home. They listen to the BBC twice a day. Some have had their college education severed, yet they want what we want. Their dreams have been put on hold and their hopes extinguished."

"China has unrivaled leverage with oil revenue it brings into Sudan and arms sales, so it can play a diplomatic role other than Khartoum's protector," Savitt, the activist, said yesterday by telephone from Kigali. "China will be sensitive to pressure and we want to say, 'China, please bring the Olympic dream to Darfur.' "

Farrow said she had received thousands of e-mails from China with eloquent appeals for an end to the suffering of Darfurians. One individual, signing his e-mail as "China's Everyman," expressed solidarity with Darfurians and said the Chinese wanted their government to lead the way in addressing the crisis.

The group is also coordinating a torch relay in 25 U.S. states from September through December.

Savitt said that when she met with China's ambassador to Washington last June, he was concerned the campaign would lead to a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. She made it clear to Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong that a boycott was not the group's aim, she said.

"Olympic Dream for Darfur is not a boycott campaign, nor does it support a boycott of the Olympics," said a press release put out by the organizers. "Our campaign believes that the sports arena is the best forum for countries to 'do battle.' " Organizers say they hope the torch campaign will galvanize a global anti-genocide movement.

Uganda: Victims Want Justice

From Reuters [The report can be found here]

Victims of atrocities in northern Uganda blame both the government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels for the murders, abductions and rapes committed during a 20-year war, the U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday.

Many survivors want compensation from the government for crimes committed by LRA rebels, the United Nations said in a study based on private interviews with 1,725 victims.

"This research study shows that the population broadly believes that both the LRA and the government -- and specifically their leaders -- should be held accountable for the harms they have caused during the conflict," the report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found.

"Sentiments of anger and vengefulness and a desire for prosecution abound in many communities," it said.

Tens of thousands of people died in the war which uprooted nearly 2 million people before a 2006 truce. The LRA is notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves.

The U.N. report, based on research in Acholiland, Lango and Teso, is a catalogue of horrific crimes, with children the main victims of abduction. Its authors said the study was designed to "amplify victims' voices".

"The most common forms of harm identified were murder, torture, abductions, rape, mutilation, arson, displacement of populations into IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, and the theft or destruction of property," it said.

Victims "repeatedly expressed their need to discover the truth about the past, especially to shed light on the identity of the perpetrators and the nature of the acts that have been committed," it said.

But they had "highly mixed views" about amnesty processes, prosecution of perpetrators before the International Criminal Court (ICC), and local justice, according to the 80-page report.

Darfur: African Nations Pledge Troops, But Expertise Still Needed

From Reuters

African nations have confirmed pledges of 11,000-12,000 troops for Darfur's joint U.N.-African Union mission so far, the state-owned Sudanese Media Centre quoted Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations as saying.

On Sunday, AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said Africans had pledged enough troops and there was no need for infantry from non-African countries, comments which angered Darfur rebels who say AU troops currently in Darfur have been unable to stem the violence.

"African pledges to participate (in the force) have reached 13-14 battalions, which is equivalent to 11,000-12,000 troops," SMC quoted Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad as saying.

A senior U.N. peacekeeping official earlier this month said mostly African nations had pledged infantry but key logistics and air support was lacking.

Analysts say much of this support needs to come from Western nations, which have yet to give any firm pledges of military personnel.

The U.N. Security Council last month authorized up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police, which would be the world's largest peacekeeping force.

The agreement came after lengthy negotiations with Sudan, in part over the composition of any force sent into its western region to try to end four years of conflict.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the African pledges, his spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York.

"However, we still need specialized units, particularly in terms of technology, communications, transportation and these can be provided by other countries ... and they are not all of them African," Montas said.

Rwanda, Nigeria and Senegal have all said they will increase their troops already on the ground. The joint force will absorb the around 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur.

Mahmoud Kane, head of the AU Darfur Integrated Task Force, said many other countries had confirmed they would offer infantry soldiers.

"The AU has also received confirmation for troops from Ethiopia, Egypt, Mauritania, Congo Brazzaville, Burkina Faso and Malawi," he told Reuters from AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.

"An informal discussion is also under way with Tanzania, Djibouti and Uganda for troop contribution for Darfur", he said, adding there were more infantry troops pledged than were needed.

But a U.N. peacekeeping official said the numbers were not as important as the capabilities of the troops.

"Initial numbers never end up being the final numbers," the U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He also added the countries may offer battalions which are not as fully equipped or mechanized as required by the U.N. peacekeeping department.

"You need to have the muscle (infantry), but the muscle without the connective tissue is not enough," he said, referring to the importance of the logistical and air support, which was still lacking.

Montas said final decisions had not been made yet and that Western countries were expected to contribute, although she did not name them. U.N. peacekeeping officials have said no Western nation so far has given a firm pledge for military personnel.

Nations should finish pledging troops by Aug. 30 for the force.

Darfur: Watch Your Facts, UK Ad Watchdog Warns

Tied to the previous post - via Reuters

Lobby groups must ensure they get their facts straight, Britain's advertising watchdog has warned after finding that the Save Darfur Coalition could not substantiate its claim of 400,000 deaths in the Sudanese region.

Made up from dozens of faith-based and advocacy organisations and backed by celebrities such as Mia Farrow and George Clooney, the US-based Save Darfur Coalition has been credited with drawing international attention to the situation in Sudan's war-torn west.

But Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said in a ruling last week that recent adverts saying that 400,000 people had died in violence that the coalition blames on the Sudanese government went too far.

"There is no dispute that atrocities are going on there," said ASA spokesman Matt Wilson. "One doesn't want to quibble when it comes to mass slaughter but they simply could not substantiate the figure of 400,000."

The Sudanese government says only 9,000 people have died since rebels took up arms in 2003 but most international experts put the figure at around 200,000.

Some 2.5 million people have fled their homes and the U.S. government accuses Sudan of genocide -- a charge the Sudanese government denies.

The ASA made its ruling in response to a complaint by a group called the European Sudanese Public Affairs Council, whose Web site says it exists in part to challenge questionable coverage of Sudanese affairs.

Aid and human rights workers say they are often under pressure to come up with headline-grabbing figures in emergencies -- but that counting the dead on the ground can be practically impossible.

The ASA says advocacy groups should be careful in their claims.

"We do try to be more sensitive when it comes to charities but there are limits," said Wilson. "We would encourage them to make sure that any figures or facts they use in adverts are accurate."

The Save Darfur Coalition said it accepted the ruling -- which said that the advert should have made it clear that 400,000 was at best an upper end estimate rather than an established fact -- but still believed its figures reflected the true size of the slaughter.

"History tells us that the size of genocides are rarely understood contemporarily," it said in a statement.

"The government of Sudan is actively obstructing any accurate verification at this time and the international community must continue to pressure President Omar al-Bashir to provide access to international peacekeepers and humanitarian workers who can more accurately document the scale of this genocide."

Darfur: An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration/Shoddy Journalism at the New York Times

From the New York Times on Sunday

JUST last month, the House of Representatives passed the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act and the United Nations Security Council decided to deploy up to 26,000 peacekeepers to Sudan. Both actions were due in no small way to the work of the Save Darfur Coalition. Through aggressive advertising campaigns, this group has done more than any other to focus world attention on the conflict in the Sudanese region.

But with a ruling Wednesday from Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority, Save Darfur now finds itself in the spotlight. Siding with a business group allied with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, the authority ruled that the high death tolls Save Darfur cites in its advertisements breached standards of truthfulness.

The ruling is more than just a minor public relations victory for Khartoum; it exposes a glaring problem in Save Darfur’s strategy. While the coalition has done an admirable job of raising awareness, it has also hampered aid-delivery groups, discredited American policy makers and diplomats and harmed efforts to respond to future humanitarian crises.

The trouble began last fall when, in ads placed throughout the United States and Britain, Save Darfur denounced the Sudanese government’s scorched-earth campaign against insurgents. “After three years, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed,” the ads said.

That claim provoked a complaint to the British ad authority from the European Sudanese Public Affairs Council. After investigating, the authority found that Save Darfur’s ad campaign violated codes of objectivity, and it ordered the group to amend its ads to present the high death toll as opinion, not fact.

Serious estimates of the number of dead in Darfur are far lower than 400,000. Last November, the American Government Accountability Office convened a panel of 12 experts to assess the credibility of six prominent mortality estimates for Darfur. Three of these came from the American State Department, the World Health Organization and the W.H.O.-affiliated Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The other three were independent efforts by activists — including one by John Hagan, a sociologist at Northwestern University, for the defunct Coalition for International Justice. Dr. Hagan’s was the highest estimate and the one on which Save Darfur based its claim.

In category after category, the experts overwhelmingly found Dr. Hagan’s estimate of 400,000 deficient. Nine of the experts said that his source data was unsound and that he failed to disclose his study’s limitations. Ten found his assumptions “unreasonable,” and 11 called his extrapolations “inappropriate.” In all, 11 experts held “low” or “very low” confidence in the study.

So how many are dead in Darfur? As the G.A.O. study notes, reliable numbers are hard to come by. But the estimate that garnered the highest confidence was the one from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. From September 2003 until June 2005, the center estimated, there were 158,000 deaths in Darfur. Of those, 131,000 were deemed “excess” — more than normally would occur.

Neither the center nor any other responsible outlet has released a tabulation of the death toll after June 2005, but observations by the United Nations and relief groups register a sharp drop — if for no other reason than much of Darfur’s population now resides in the relative safety of aid camps. In 2005, the mortality rate fell below the level that’s considered to be an emergency.

But now that the government has resumed bombings and the rebel groups are fighting among themselves as well as against the government, violence has increased. In the last half of 2006, civilian deaths averaged 200 per month. Combining these estimates suggests Darfur’s death toll now hovers at 200,000 — just half of what Save Darfur claimed a year ago in its ad and still claims on its Web site.

Of course, whether 200,000 or 400,000 have died, the need to resolve the conflict in Darfur is the same. But Save Darfur’s inflated estimate — used even after Dr. Hagan revised his estimate sharply downward — only frustrates peace efforts.

During debate on the House floor last month, for example, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee claimed that “an estimated 400,000 people have been killed by the government of Sudan and its janjaweed allies.” Ms. Jackson-Lee is hardly alone in making that allegation, and catering to the Sudanese government’s sensitivities may not seem important. But the repeated error only hardens Khartoum against constructive dialogue. If diplomacy, not war, is the ultimate goal for resolving the conflict in Darfur, the United States must maintain its credibility as an honest broker.

Inaccurate data can also lead to prescriptive blunders. During the worst period of violence, for example, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster estimated that nearly 70 percent of Darfur’s excess deaths were due not to violence but to disease and malnutrition. This suggests that policy makers should look for ways to bolster and protect relief groups — by continuing to demand that the Sudanese government not hamper the delivery of aid, to be sure, but also by putting vigorous public pressure, so far lacking, on the dozen rebel groups that routinely raid convoys.

Exaggerated death tolls also make it difficult for relief organizations to deliver their services. Khartoum considers the inflated numbers to be evidence that all groups that deliver aid to Darfur are actually adjuncts of the activist groups that the regime considers its enemies, and thus finds justification for delaying visas, refusing to allow shipments of supplies and otherwise putting obstacles in the way of aid delivery.

Lastly, mortality one-upmanship by advocacy groups threatens to inure the public to both current and future catastrophes. If 400,000 becomes the de facto benchmark for action, other bloody conflicts around the globe — in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Somalia — seem to pale in comparison. Ultimately, the inflated claims fuel a death race in which aid and action are based not on facts but on which advocacy group yells the loudest.

Two-hundred thousand dead in Darfur is egregious enough. No matter how noble their intentions, there’s no need for activists to kill more Darfuris than the conflict itself already has.

An exceprt from a response from Eric Reeves in Political Affairs

A recent op/ed on human mortality in Darfur, which appeared in the New York Times (“An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration,” Sunday, August 12, 2007), has garnered considerable attention, indeed notoriety. The piece is by Sam Dealey, Time Magazine’s Africa correspondent---someone who gives no evidence of previous engagement with the complex issues attending any assessment of human mortality in Darfur. Nor does he demonstrate real familiarity with the relevant research and reports, or with whole reams of relevant data.

I will be writing at length about this truly disgraceful and destructive piece of shoddy work, with includes some of the most egregious errors I've seen in almost nine years of assessing journalists reporting on Sudan. But since Dealey has, apparently effortlessly and without qualms, produced what is to date demonstrably the most inaccurate and misleading account of Darfur mortality, some preliminary reckoning is called for.

In the most spectacular example of ignorance on display, Dealey reveals that he is unaware of the September 2006 article on Darfur mortality that appeared in the distinguished journal Science (“Death in Darfur,” Science, 15 September 2006, Vol. 313. no. 5793, pp. 1578 - 1579). As any close historical reading of Darfur news reporting will reveal, this article is the true basis for the common news estimate of 200,000 deaths in Darfur. Astonishingly, Dealey declares that June 2005 was the last time a credible new report on mortality was published (“[no] responsible outlet has released a tabulation of the death toll after June 2005," Dealey erroneously declares; New York Times, August 12, 2007). Such a claim makes of Science---one of the most distinguished journals in the world, and certainly one of the most carefully fact-checked---something other than a "responsible outlet.” There could not be a more egregious or revealing error on Dealey’s part.

Darfur: 6 African Nations Pledge Troops

From the AP

Six African countries have given written pledges to contribute more than 12,000 troops to an African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur, a senior African Union official said Monday.

Pledges received from Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Malawi and Senegal amount to 12,800 troops, said Mahmoud Kane, head of the African Union's Darfur Integrated Task Force.

"We believe it is a positive response from Africa," said Kane.

Tanzania, Cameroon and Uganda, also pledged troops but they did not indicate exactly how many soldiers they planned to contribute, Kane said.

Kane said that the six countries will also provide support services for their troops, including mechanics and medical staff. Ethiopia has also said it can provide a field hospital with 60 staff members, Kane said.

African countries had given enough pledges to make up the joint U.N.-African Union operation of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police for Darfur that the U.N. Security Council authorized on July 31, African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare said Sunday.

The Sudanese government is adamantly opposed to non-Africans playing any major role in the hybrid U.N.-African Union operation.

Some 7,000 African peacekeepers from Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa are serving in Darfur.

Nearly four years of fighting between African rebel forces and the Khartoum government and allied militias in the western Sudanese region has forced more than 2.5 million from their homes and resulted in the death of at least 200,000 people.

Darfur: Romney Portfolio Has Link to Sudan

From the Los Angeles Times

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney divested from companies doing business in Iran, but he still holds stock in an oil company that does business in Sudan -- where the government is accused of sponsoring genocide -- his financial disclosure report filed Monday shows.

Romney, the wealthiest presidential contender, is worth $190 million to $250 million, with investments spread among stocks, treasuries and high-end funds. R. Bradford Malt, Romney's attorney, acts as sole trustee of what until Monday was a blind trust, and makes investment decisions.

Romney trails in national polls but is doing well in the polls in the early voting states.

His wealth is key to his candidacy. As he did when he successfully ran for Massachusetts governor in 2002, he is dipping into his accounts. He has lent his presidential campaign more than $9 million.

Romney first filed a financial disclosure when he unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 1994. The Boston Herald then reported that he had assets of $16 million to $25 million.

In a telephone news conference, Malt said Monday that he became more attentive to Romney's holdings once Romney began running for president. The financial disclosure, which covers 2006 and the first half of 2007, shows that Malt sold stock in dozens of companies in recent months.

For example, after Romney publicly called for divestment from companies doing business in Iran, Malt sold stock in some such companies, such as the Italian oil company Eni S.P.A.

According to the report, Romney holds stock in China Petroleum and Chemical (also known as SinoPec), an oil supply company that has dealings in Sudan, according to an organization dedicated to ending the genocide in the African nation's Darfur region.

President Bush has denounced the killings of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur and declared that genocide is being committed. California and early-voting Iowa are among the states where officials have urged divestment.

Romney's stock in the company is valued at $50,000 to $100,000, and generated income of no more than $15,000 -- a tiny fraction of his portfolio. (The federal reports give ranges rather than specific values of holdings.)

The Washington-based Genocide Intervention Network has said the Chinese company has major operations in Sudan and is one of the companies from which people should divest if they are concerned about genocide in Darfur.

"Citizens have to do everything to take a stand against this genocide, and presidential candidates have to take a leading role," said Adam Sterling of the Genocide Intervention Network.

DRC: Uganda Will Not Attack

From the AP

Uganda will not send troops into neighbouring Congo in response to recent cross-border raids by unknown gunmen, a Ugandan official said on Monday to allay fears the violence could escalate.

"The Uganda army will not attack Congo territory, the Uganda army will defend against anybody who wants to enter the country'" Ugandan Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesha told reporters in Congo's capital, Kinshasa.

Uganda has blamed two recent attacks on Congolese gunmen - either government soldiers or private militia fighters. In the first, a Briton was killed in an attack on an oil exploration boat operating on Uganda's Lake Albert.

Then late last week, dozens of gunmen fired on civilians and looted shops in a Ugandan town near the Congo border.

Congolese officials have said they have no information suggesting that either group came from their country.

Kutesha said he aimed to seek a peaceful resolution of the dispute on his one-day visit.

"I'm here to make sure to make sure that there is no fighting at all. If the are issues they should be discussed," Kutesha said. He is set to meet with Congo President Joseph Kabila.

"As you know there have been some incidents ... but we don't want escalation of this," Kutesha said.

Congo Defence Minister Chikez Diemu said on Friday that there had been incidents of Ugandans crossing into Congo as well, resulting in a recent exchange of fire that left one Congolese soldier dead and a Ugandan wounded.

Sudan/Uganda: Southern State Disarms as LRA Leave

From Reuters

Disarmament has finally started in south Sudan's state of Eastern Equatoria under a 2005 peace deal now it has been made possible by the departure of Ugandan rebels, a security official said.

Authorities had previously been reluctant to take guns from heavily armed south Sudanese, who complained of looting and abductions by Ugandan fighters of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) taking refuge in the region.

But the rebels have now moved to assembly points on the borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo following Ugandan peace talks in Juba, capital of south Sudan's semi-autonomous government.

"We didn't want to make people vulnerable to the LRA without their guns," said Eastern Equatoria's security advisor Marcello Dominic. "But now we're doing selective disarmament."

South Sudan's civil war has raged on and off since independence in 1956. There was heavy fighting in eastern Equatoria between south Sudanese rebels and the northern government.

Disarmament under the 2005 peace deal has already begun in two other states of south Sudan.

Dominic told Reuters on Saturday the last Ugandan LRA fighters left eastern Equatoria in June, allowing some disarmament to begin there. Four villages there have now been disarmed, he said.

"This has been a real, long political fight," he said. "Even since the peace talks began, the LRA continued to kill and abduct our people. We still consider them our enemy."

Dominic said the state government believes at least 300 people have been killed by the Ugandan rebels since the LRA was first reported in the state in 2004. The LRA has in the past denied attacking south Sudanese.

Tribal violence between roaming cattle herders has also contributed to violence in the state.

In May, at least 54 people, most of them women and children, were killed in tribal clashes in the state.

Tribal chiefs say their powers were destroyed by the proliferation of guns in the area, where there was heavy fighting between the north and south during Sudan's civil war.

But Dominic said armed cattle herders from neighbouring Ugandan and Kenyan who roam across the porous borders were also an obstacle to a full disarmament campaign.

"The government fears our people will be made more vulnerable if disarmed," he said.

Int'l Justice: Trial of Liberia's Taylor Delayed Again

From Reuters

The war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been postponed again after his new defence team asked for a delay until January 2008 to prepare fully, a court spokesman said on Monday.

The trial was due to resume on August 20, but the court will now meet then to decide how to proceed and judges are expected to set a new date for the case to continue, the spokesman added in a statement.

Taylor, accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation in a quest for diamonds during the West African country's civil war, boycotted the opening of his trial in June in a dispute over the resources allocated his defence.

Lengthy legal wrangling ensued and more funds were eventually made available to Taylor. A new defence team was appointed last month.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up with United Nations backing to try some of those deemed most culpable for crimes against humanity in the country's 1991-2002 war.

Drugged up rebels and militia fighters, often only children themselves, killed, raped and maimed men, women and children.

Taylor's trial is being held in The Hague because of fears it could spur instability if held in Freetown, Sierra Leone. On Saturday, the country held its first elections since the departure of U.N. peacekeepers two years ago.

Darfur: Arab Rebels Claim to Have Captured 12 Sudan Soldiers

From Reuters

An obscure mostly Arab Darfur rebel group said on Monday it had kidnapped 12 Sudanese soldiers and challenged the government to stop mobilising militias to counter the four-year-old revolt in western Sudan.

The group, calling itself the Democratic Popular Front Army (DPFA), said in a statement sent to Reuters that among the captured was officer Ali Mohamed, whose military I.D. number was 44206.

"This is the first time we have captured government soldiers," the DPFA's secretary general, Osama Mohamed al-Hassan, told Reuters.

"We have been marginalised by the government. The government took advantage of our sons and paid them and gave them arms and used them to fight against others," he said.

He was referring to the Popular Defence Forces, mobilised by the government to quell revolts in Darfur and during decades of civil war in the south.

"We want them to stop the PDF, to leave people to live their lives and be able to farm and feed their cattle and eat and live in peace," he said.

The statement said the attack on Sudanese forces occurred in Soja in Wadi Saleh, in the southern area of West Darfur state, on Saturday.

"Our forces captured eight military vehicles as well as a large amount of weapons and ammunition and are controlling the area," said the statement, which included a British telephone number, an Egyptian number and a thuraya satellite phone number.

A Sudanese army spokesman said he had no immediate comment.

The group said its members came from mostly Arab tribes -- the Rizeigat, Habbaniya, Terjem, Beni Halba, Taasha -- and the non-Arab Fellata tribe. They are mostly based in West and South Darfur states but had some people in the north too.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing the central government of marginalising the remote, arid west. Khartoum mobilised mostly Arab militias to stem the revolt.

A Sudanese analyst who declined to be named said Arab tribes felt they had been largely ignored in peace talks with the government.

"They have development needs too, and feel they are being labelled the bad guys," the analyst said.

"This group is vitally important because it represents a young generation of Darfurian Arabs who refuse to die for a government 1,000 miles away that has always neglected all Darfurians -- Arab and non-Arabs," said Julie Flint, co-author of a book on Darfur who has met the group's leader.

"The vast majority of Darfur's Arabs have refused to take sides so far. They may be beginning to come off the fence."

Darfur: Rebels Want Peace Talks After UN Troops Deployed

From AFP

A key Darfur rebel faction said on Monday it would only take part in peace talks once UN forces have secured the war-ravaged region of Sudan and insisted on non-African troops in a new hybrid force.

"We have to suspend the conflict, which means security on the ground by a UN force. The killing is still going on," said Yahia Bolad, spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement's leader Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur.

"As soon as UN troops are on the ground we are ready to negotiate, but that is our red line," Bolad told AFP in Cairo by telephone from his base in Britain.

The UN Security Council on July 31 authorised a 26,000-strong UN-African Union "hybrid" force for Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.1 million have been displaced by four years of conflict in what has been described as the world's biggest humanitarian catastrophe.

About 7,000 African soldiers currently make up the African Union peacekeeping force that was first sent to Darfur in August 2004. But the troops, ill-equipped and underfunded, have been unable stem the violence and are often targeted by the warring parties.

Resolution 1769 says the hybrid force -- set to be the biggest ever peacekeeping mission in the world -- should begin being deployed no later than December 31, although full deployment is not expected before mid-2008.

The African Union said on Sunday it had commitments from African nations to contribute enough troops for the new hybrid force, but Bolad insisted troops must also come from Western nations.

"Troops from African countries affect the situation because maybe they have the same problems as are happening in Darfur, with human rights violations and dictatorships," he said, declining to say which countries he had in mind.

"That is why we prefer the hybrid force to be from Western countries, NATO," he said, insisting also that the logistics of the peacekeeping operation would be beyond the capacities of African nations.

The United States has accused Khartoum of embarking on a genocidal campaign in Darfur, saying it was encouraging a militia there to brutally crack down on the population.

A peace deal was signed with the government in Abuja in May 2006 but only one rebel faction endorsed it, sparking deep divisions and a new surge in violence.

The SLM faction of Nur, the founding father of the rebellion and a member of Darfur's largest tribe, did not take part in peace talks attended by other rebels in Arusha earlier this month, insisting on a ceasefire ahead of negotiations.

The eight rebel groups at the talks agreed on a common platform for peace negotiations with the Sudanese government that they said could start within three months.

Unlike many of the other rebel leaders, Nur, who lives in exile in France, has broad popular support among Darfuri civilians, especially those displaced by fighting.

Darfur: Another Obstacle to Peace

From the Los Angeles Times

Three years after it was burned to the ground, the village of Tulus in Darfur is springing back to life.

Corn and sesame sprout from fertile fields. Children play around newly built huts. Smoke from cooking fires once again rises from the land.

Problem is, those rebuilding Tulus are not the original inhabitants, who were chased away by pro-government Sudanese militias in 2004 and are afraid to return. Instead, their place has been taken by Chadian Arabs, who recently crossed the border to flee violence in their own country.

"It's comfortable here," said Sheik Algooni Mohammed Zeean, 42, leader of 150 Chadian Arabs who in March settled on a grassy plain not far from the ruins of Tulus' abandoned homes and school. Gesturing toward the fields bearing their first harvest in Sudan, he smiled. "I feel like this is my home now."

Over the last six months, nearly 30,000 Chadian Arabs have crossed into Sudan, many of them settling on land owned by Darfur's pastoral tribes that have been driven into displacement camps, aid groups say.

This migration has quickly become the latest obstacle to peace in western Sudan, drawing the attention of international observers and protests from those displaced from Darfur, who accuse the Sudanese government of orchestrating an "Arabization" scheme by repopulating their burned-out villages with foreigners.

"This is a government plot to give our land to Chadian Arabs," said Mohammed Abakar Mohammed Adam, 27, a farmer from the village of Bechabecha, which he said was abandoned after armed nomadic tribes known asjanjaweed, widely believed to be backed by the government, attacked in 2003. But in recent months, Chadian newcomers have begun building homes atop the remains.

The Darfur conflict began in early 2003 when rebels attacked government forces to protest the poor resources and services in the neglected area. The regime in Khartoum, dominated by Sudanese Arabs, is accused of stirring up ethnic hatred by arming militias to attack villages that supported the rebels, many of whom increasingly call themselves "Africans." U.S. officials have labeled the government's campaign genocide. An estimated 200,000 people have died, mostly from disease and hunger in the early days of the crisis.

The recent influx of Chadian Arabs reflects the conflict's spread over the border, where similar clashes based on ethnic differences are destabilizing eastern Chad. Over the last year, nearly 50,000 Chadian refugees have sought shelter in Darfur, though most of the earlier arrivals were not Arab and settled in refugee camps.

Government officials in Khartoum have said little publicly about the recent influx.Sudanese Arab leaders in West Darfur are welcoming the Chadian Arabs, directing themto the vacated land and assisting them with food and supplies. They insist they are simply helping their Arab brethren at a time of crisis and that the newcomers will return to Chad as soon as it's safe.

But for some displaced Tulus villagers, now living less than 20 miles away in Habillah, news that strangers are cultivating their land has brought suspicion and anguish.

"That is our land," said Miriam Yahya Ahmed, a 60-year-old widow with four adult children. "Those people should go."

In Tulus, she lived on a small farm with fields of corn and peanuts. Now, the hunched, gray-haired woman struggles to nurture a few dozen corn stalks on a dirt patch behind her straw hut. International humanitarian groups worry that disputes over the land might reignite violence in western Darfur and lead to further delays in resolving the region's massive displacement crisis, with more than 2 million people driven from their homes.

"The mere presence of people on this land will make it more difficult for [displaced persons] to return home," said Ita Schuette, head of the Habillah branch of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world body's refugee agency, which has been monitoring the influx.

Tensions have been heightened by rumors that some Chadians have been offered Sudanese identification cards or papers to help them establish citizenship. One Darfur hospital was reportedly asked to forge 100 birth certificates, according to a U.N. official. In another reported case, Chadians were allegedly photographed for ID cards in the city of Foro Burunga.

U.N. officials have been unable to confirm those reports and said they have found no ID cards or evidence that the government was plotting to get Chadians to immigrate. After interviewing hundreds of Chadians, the agency has concluded that many are entitled to refugee status because of the violence in their home country.

But leaders with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the former rebel army in the south, lodged a complaint in parliament in May about the Chadian migration. SPLM officials, who reached a power-sharing agreement with Khartoum in 2005, fear that Chadians will be issued fraudulent voting cards in an effort to sway the upcoming national census or next year's presidential election.

Others worry that the presence of Chadian Arabs will draw attacks by Darfur rebels and further destabilize the region.

West Darfur's Gov. Abu Gasim Imam, a former rebel commander whose group signed last year's controversial peace deal with the government, said he plans to dispatch about 1,000 troops to keep the peace. He expressed solidarity with displaced Darfur residents and said the Chadians should be relocated to refugee camps.

"We are very engaged in protecting the land for the original owners," Imam said. He said some Chadians might be legitimate refugees, but suggested others had ulterior motives and might be working in conjunction with Sudanese Arabs.

"This is not simply a refugee crisis," he said. "It's a strategic attempt to occupy land."

U.N. officials are pressing leaders in Khartoum to publicly reaffirm the property rights of the displaced. Under the 2006 Darfur peace agreement, the government granted the right of return to those displaced by violence, but an existing Sudanese law states that owners lose their rights if they abandon land for more than a year.

The U.N. also wants the government to designate the Chadians as refugees, which would allow them to be relocated to camps. Such a move might also alleviate citizenship concerns, since it would be difficult for people registered as Chadian refugees to later claim they are Sudanese.

The majority of Chadian Arabs have rejected offers of humanitarian aid and efforts to relocate them to camps, saying they brought most of their belongings with them, including food, seeds, tents and herds.

"For those who need help, we are giving out of our own pockets," said Al Hadi Ahmed Shineibat, a Sudanese Arab sheik who has been assisting Chadian arrivals asthey cross the border. Shineibat is the brother of Abdullah abu Shineibat, an alleged janjaweed leader cited by the State Department for attacks against Darfur villages in 2003 and 2004. Last year, Human Rights Watch accused Abdullah abu Shineibatof launching attacks in eastern Chad.

Ahmed Shineibat and other Sudanese Arab sheiks appear to be taking the lead role in assigning Chadian arrivals to disputed land in Darfur. In some cases, they have sent trucks to transport newly arrived Chadians to their assigned land. Some are also charging rent, even though they do not own the land.

So far, the influx of Chadians has avoided problems usually associated with sudden, conflict-driven displacements, such as food shortages or overcrowding. "It appears to be very well organized," Schuette, the U.N. official, said.

Resting under a tree in his home village of Um Samgamti, Ahmed Shineibat dismissed claims that the Chadian migration was part of a government-organized land grab. He predicted most Chadians would return as soon as it was safe.

"We told them when they first arrived that when the owners of the land return, they will have to leave," Shineibat said. "The land is not being occupied. It's just being used temporarily by guests. They are not Sudanese. So eventually they will have to leave."

He said Chad and Sudan have a long history of cross-border migrations and land sharing, particularly during periods of strife, and that land is traditionally returned to the original owners.

Despite his assurances, some Chadian Arabs appear to be digging in their heels. A group of about 300 who arrived in Tulus before the most recent wave initially identified themselves to U.N. interviewers as Chadian. Earlier this month, their sheik changed his story, claiming the group was from Darfur.

"We're Sudanese," said Sheik Ismail Mohammed Shein, 57. "This is our land. We are not leaving."

He claimed to have a government ID card to prove his assertion, but declined to show it.

A few miles away, those who arrived more recently with Zeean take a more conciliatory approach. They say they were chased from their village by Chadian soldiers and walked seven days with only what they could carry on their backs.

At first, the group's leader feigned ignorance about the original inhabitants of Tulus, saying he assumed the land was abandoned. Later Zeean acknowledged he was aware of the controversy over their arrival and the fears of the former residents. He vowed to leave the land if the owners returned.

"Our land in Chad is better anyway," he said.

Asked what he would do if he returned home to find strangers occupying his property, Zeean didn't hesitate: "I'd tell them to leave," he said. "That's my land."

Sudan: Country Has a Bigger Crisis Than Darfur in Failing Peace Process

From the San Francisco Chronicle

The conflict in Sudan's Darfur region has distracted world attention from a greater potential disaster - the possible collapse of that country's historic north-south peace treaty, Sudanese officials, Western analysts and former diplomats agree.

The failure of the 2005 peace pact would restart Sudan's 21-year civil war, which killed more than 2 million people and created 4 million refugees. Despite an accord that gives the south wide autonomy and the option to eventually declare independence, a growing chorus of experts says the two sides are likely to war again over oil.

"This doesn't seem like it's going to come to a peaceful solution," said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia. "I can't believe the northern government is going to relinquish the southern oil fields without a fight."

Some southerners go even further.

"The border will be established through the force of arms, this I am convinced," said a southern general who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media. "The politics have failed."

Sudan's Arab-dominated north and black African south have been in conflict almost continuously since the country gained independence in 1956. In the late 1990s the northern army drove tens of thousands from their ancestral lands in the Greater Upper Nile region to attain easy access to the oil fields. Today, in accordance with the peace treaty, that oil - 425,000 barrels daily in exports- has fueled a limited economic boom in the north and sustained a struggling government in the south. These oil fields would almost certainly end up in southern territory once borders are properly marked, most analysts say.

Even as political leaders declare their firm commitment to peace, the Sudanese Armed Forces of the north and the once rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army of the south are reinforcing positions along the contested border, where most oil reserves lie, diplomats, analysts and Sudanese officials say.

The south, almost completely devoid of roads, sanitation, electricity and industry, depends totally on oil revenues that flow into its coffers from Khartoum, the capital. The north, despite its hydroelectric dams and mechanized farming, is almost equally reliant on oil exports.

In 2005, a special commission mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement - commonly known here as the CPA - put the disputed area of Abyei squarely in the south - and the coveted Heglig oil fields inside Abyei.

While the peace treaty is supposed to be ironclad, the northern government has rejected the commission's ruling, claiming Abyei. Many analysts say this breach is a significant sign of what's to come. In the next two years, the treaty calls for the demarcation of the north-south border, a national census, free elections in 2009 and, in 2011, a referendum in which southerners will almost certainly vote to secede.

"Chances for the unity of Sudan are nil," Pagan Amum, chairman of the south's ruling party, said recently.

Each of these steps would bring the south closer to independence, and each would likely be stymied by Sudan's ruling National Congress Party, most analysts say.

"Peace will be useless if we are only providing them a conducive atmosphere and environment to rob what is ours," said Sarah Nyanath Elijah, a legislator from the oil-rich Upper Nile state.

With such formidable challenges, "there is little reason for optimism," Sudan analyst John Young wrote last month in a report for Small Arms Survey, a Geneva research group. "The anticipated disputes over borders, national resources, and the census could assume violent proportions and set the stage for a descent into war."

Such pessimism - or realism - has led to a military buildup in areas where the number of troops is supposed to be falling.

Darfur: Enough African Troops for New Force

From Reuters

African nations have pledged enough troops for war-torn Darfur's 26,000-strong peacekeeping force and non-Africans are not needed, the African Union's top diplomat Alpha Oumar Konare said.

"I can say ... that we have enough pledges from African nations so that we do not need to turn to forces from non-African countries," Konare said, according to an AU statement on Monday.

After meeting Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum on Sunday, Konare said the United Nations now had to fund the force.

The U.N. Security Council last month authorised the 26,000-strong joint U.N. and African Union force, but the General Assembly has to approve funding for the operation, which will come from the U.N. peacekeeping budget.

Earlier this month, a senior U.N. peacekeeping official said there were sufficient troops for the force, mostly from Africa, but some would come from Asian countries too.

European countries have also pledged soldiers and police.

Konare described as "positive" talks in the Tanzanian town of Arusha where many rebel commanders and factions agreed to a common platform for Darfur peace talks.

"Today it is incomprehensible not to come to the (negotiating) table," he said, urging all rebel factions to attend renewed peace talks, due to begin within three months.

Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Chairman and founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur refuses to go to peace talks until a no-fly zone and an oil-for-food programme is imposed on Sudan.

All other factions are open to talks, but differences remain between Khartoum and rebels on whether a peace deal signed by one of three rebel factions in 2006 will be the basis of talks.

Rebels want it scrapped, but Khartoum says it cannot betray those who signed in good faith in the previous talks.

Darfur: Jamous May Leave U.N. Care Thursday

From Reuters

Darfur rebel figure Suleiman Jamous said on Monday if the United Nations did not respond to his request to fly him out of Sudan for medical treatment by Thursday, he would hand himself over to the government.

Jamous, the Sudan Liberation Army's (SLA) humanitarian coordinator, was the key liaison between insurgents and the world's largest aid operation helping some 4.2 million people in Darfur.

"I gave them until Thursday," Jamous said.

"If they refuse to take me out, I will just go out to where the government of Sudan is waiting to be detained, and I will consider this a compulsory turning over to the government by the U.N." he told Reuters by telephone.

The United Nations moved him to a U.N. hospital near Darfur more than a year ago without informing Khartoum. Sudan calls him a criminal and had said it would arrest him if he left U.N. care.

Last week Sudan said Jamous could be released for peace talks, but declined to say whether his freedom would be conditional.

Jamous needs a stomach biopsy which cannot be performed in the U.N. hospital. On Monday he left the hospital for the first time in more than 13 months to walk to the nearby U.N. headquarters and ask to be flown out of Sudan for medical treatment.

"They replied they needed time to consult with Khartoum and I have given them until Thursday," Jamous said.

"Now I am becoming indifferent. If I am detained by the United Nations or the government of Sudan it is the same," he said.

The United Nations was not immediately available to comment, but two U.N. sources have said they were unlikely to fly Jamous out of Sudan.

Darfur: Arab Tribes Sign Pact After Clashes Kill 140

From Reuters

Rival Darfur Arab tribes have signed a truce after more than 140 people died in clashes, an official and tribal leaders said on Sunday.

"It's an agreement to cease hostilities," Mohammed Ahmed Hassan, a Terjem tribal leader, told Reuters of the deal his tribe signed with the Rizeigat on Saturday.

"If the Rizeigat adhere to and respect the agreement, the Terjem will not violate it," he said.

Both are Arab tribes in South Darfur state. Fighting has continued on and off for months between them, but a reconciliation deal signed in February fell apart in July.

Ali Hassan, a Rizeigat tribal leader, said his group was committed to the truce. "We are going around trying to explain it to our people," he said.

Most of the casualties of the fighting were Terjem.

"Around 145 of our people were killed between July 30 and August 8," said Mohammed Ahmed Hassan, adding that 40 people with serious injuries were still in hospital in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur State.

"We have buried them in mass graves," he added. He said the Rizeigat had superior firepower.

South Darfur's Labour Minister Abdul Rahman al-Zein has previously said three Rizeigat were killed in the clashes.

Each tribe blamed the other for starting the fighting.

The Terjem are a sedentary farming tribe while the Rizeigat are nomadic cattle herders. The latest problems began as the Rizeigat moved north in their seasonal migration, passing close to Terjem territory. The Terjem say the cattle eat their crops.

"The Terjem tell them you cannot pass through here," said Zein. "The government will deploy forces in the trouble spots to ensure compliance."

Ali Hassan declined to comment on the numbers killed.

Darfur: Concern Rises About Reports of New Fighting

From the New York Times

The African Union is investigating reports of a new round of intense fighting between Sudanese government troops and rebels in Darfur in which more than 100 soldiers may have been killed, an African Union spokesman said Friday.

Several aid organizations said the fighting was imperiling humanitarian programs in a swath of southern Darfur that has become so lawless and violent — and rebel-controlled — that it is considered a no-go zone even for peacekeepers.

“We’re looking into several reports about the fighting and we’re very concerned,” said Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for the African Union, which has 7,000 peacekeepers in Sudan. “What’s most disappointing is that this broke out just days after the Arusha agreement.”

An agreement was signed this week in Arusha, Tanzania, by more than half a dozen of Darfur’s many rebel groups, which pledged to work together to end the bloodshed in Darfur that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and destabilized a large area of central Africa. The Sudanese government welcomed the rebels’ agreement tepidly, saying it supported the idea of a cease-fire, but was disappointed that several insurgent groups had boycotted the peace process.

One of the leading rebel groups to sign the Arusha agreement was the Justice and Equality Movement, which has fought the government on and off with varying degrees of intensity, partly because of violent internal splits.

This week, the movement said it had shot down a Sudanese fighter jet and routed government forces in southern Darfur, claims the government denied. The movement also accused Sudan of bombing villages recently and driving thousands of people from their homes, which the government also said was false.

According to aid workers, the fighting in southern Darfur has been exacerbated by increasing tensions among nomadic tribes, which until recently had sided with the government.

At the same time, United Nations officials have said that attacks on aid convoys and aid workers across Darfur are rising sharply, and that some towns as close as 15 miles apart can now be reached only by helicopter because the roads are so dangerous.

Darfur: Over 20,000 Protest Against Arusha Peace Talks

From APA

About 22,000 displaced persons in the Darfur region of Sudan have demonstrated in protest against the outcome of the Arusha peace talks, APA learnt here on Sunday.

The protesters, from Kalma and Atash camps, were protesting in support of the demand by rebel leader Abdel Wahid al Nur who is demanding deployment of international peacekeepers in Darfur before talks.

The demonstrators condemned the Arusha meeting, saying peace would not be realized through the Arusha negotiations but through the participation of all Darfurians, the official spokesman of the internally displaced persons Hussein Abu Shartay told APA.

Shartay said the displaced persons in Darfur made submissions to UN envoy Jan Eliasson on the necessity of implementing the UN Security Council resolution 1769 on deploying a United Nations-African Union hybrid operation in Darfur.

He said they told Eliasson during his visit last Friday that no peace in Darfur is possible without the participation of Al-Nur, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, who refused to take part in the Arusha meeting in Tanzania last week.

Al-Nur refused to take part in the Arusha meeting and demanded that Khartoum commits itself to the ceasefire signed in 2004 and the deployment of international peacekeepers in Darfur.

Shartay said the displaced people support the views and principles of the Sudan Liberation Movement under the chairmanship of Al-Nur, adding there would be no peace without him.

Representatives of rebel groups met in Arusha, under the aegis of the African Union and the United Nations, to define a common position ahead of peace negotiations with Khartoum.

Darfur: Campaign Starts Olympic Torch Genocide Tour

From Reuters

Actress Mia Farrow and fellow campaigners have begun an Olympic-style torch relay through countries that have suffered genocide to press China to help end abuses in the Darfur region of its ally Sudan.

Farrow, a goodwill ambassador for U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF and outspoken critic of abuses in western Sudan, lit a torch just across the border in Chad almost exactly a year before the Beijing Olympics are due to open on August 8, 2008.

"This flame represents and honours all those who have been lost, and all those who still suffer," said Farrow as she held the symbolic torch in Oure Cassoni refugee camp, 3 miles from Chad's border with Sudan.

"This flame celebrates the courage of those who survived and represents the hope we all share for an end to the violence, and a safe return home," she said.

During a fierce rain and dust storm which engulfed the camp, the actress then wrapped up the ceremony by symbolically leading away a refugee boy into the distance, still holding the torch high in her other hand, to cheers from fellow activists.

Darfur: Activists Say Divestment Campaign Working

From Reuters

The campaign to persuade U.S. companies and investors to halt the flow of dollars to war-torn Sudan through China and other countries is making significant progress, activists say.

U.S. sanctions on Sudan, where conflict in the Darfur region has been branded "genocide" by President George W. Bush, already limit most transactions, though humanitarian aid and agricultural assistance have been allowed.

But U.S. institutional investors, mutual funds, and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway have billions of dollars invested in companies that operate in -- or have ties to -- Sudan, particularly the oil business.

Activists have lobbied for investors to dump shares and bonds in PetroChina Co. Ltd., whose parent company China National Petroleum Corp. is helping Sudan tap its oil reserves, as well as India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. and Malaysia's Petronas

"The burgeoning Sudan divestment movement has already facilitated a response from companies operating in Sudan, institutional investors and mutual fund managers," said Adam Sterling, director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force.

He cited 19 U.S. states, nine cities including Los Angeles, and 54 universities that are beginning to divest from Sudan. Sterling also noted major companies, such as Britain's Rolls-Royce, have withdrawn.

Some $3.5 billion of foreign direct investment flowed into Sudan last year, a jump of 53 percent over 2005.

However, after the first quarter of 2006 when almost $1.6 billion entered, investment dropped to below $700 million in each of the next three quarters, according to International Monetary Fund figures.

Darfur: New Clashes Raise Questions About Peace Efforts

From VOA

Clashes in Sudan's Darfur region have reportedly killed dozens of people including rebels and government forces. The rebels say that subsequent air raids by the Sudanese government has forced 25,000 people to flee their homes in the troubled region. Nick Wadhams has more from Nairobi.

The latest round of fighting began last week with an attack by rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement on the town of Adila. The subsequent clashes between the rebels and government forces raises new fears that efforts to end the Darfur conflict will be lost just a week after the U.N. Security Council authorized a peacekeeping force of 26,000 for the region.

The peacekeepers are not expected to arrive for months but will find themselves paralyzed if there is no peace to keep. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million others have been displaced in Darfur since fighting began in 2003, and many had hoped the peacekeeping force was a sign of better things to come.

The Justice and Equality Movement says it launched the latest attacks starting a week ago on Adila, where Sudanese government forces were guarding the sole rail link between Darfur and the capital Khartoum to the west. The government says it has since recaptured the town.

The rebels contend that government forces had resumed aerial bombing in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that banned such flights. It also claimed to have shot down a government jet, a claim that Khartoum denies.

Another rebel faction, the Sudan Liberation Army of Minni Minawi, recently clashed with government forces near the city of Nyala.

The spokesman for the small African Union peacekeeping force now in Darfur, Noureddine Mezni, says that is a bad sign because the SLA was among the groups that signed a peace deal with the government in 2006.

"Even the signatories cannot solve their grievances through the proper channels but rather resort to hostile acts which further delays the peace process," said Mezni. "Really we are calling on all the stakeholders to stop fighting, talk to each other and to set their problems through peaceful means. Everybody now agrees that there is no military solution to the conflict in Darfur."

The attacks are also drawing criticism from Darfur's other rebel groups because they came either just before or during negotiations over the weekend in Arusha, Tanzania, where the rebels agreed to present a united front ahead of possible peace talks with Khartoum.

A separate faction of the Sudan Liberation Army which did not participate in those talks called the Justice and Equality Movement attacks a bid for attention. Yahia Bolad is a London-based spokesman for that faction.

"This is not the first time. When the negotiation started, they started to make disturbance for the negotiation," said Bolad. "This is their way to make attraction to themselves that they are there but we have commitment to the ceasefire agreement. If you are going to negotiate in Arusha, this is a double standard."

Analysts had said that an important success of the Arusha talks was the fact that the rebels had managed to speak with one voice. Now, if individual rebel groups are again launching attacks on their own, the Khartoum government could see the rebels as divided and weak, and may be less inclined to negotiate with them.

Darfur: The Bush Administration and the ICC

Text of an email from Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch

In May 2005, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for cable traffic and other items that spoke to the development of Darfur policy at the State Department. Finally, last month, I received a package of some 800 documents. Not all of the documents are that useful, but there are some fascinating tidbits hidden therein --- including documents pertaining to the winter/spring 2005 debate at the Security Council over whether or not the International Criminal Court should be given jurisdiction to prosecute alleged war crimes in Darfur.

(Some background: Since taking office, the Bush administration has been openly hos