Wednesday 9 January 2008.
January 8, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday he was "deeply troubled" by the unending crisis in Darfur and called for rapid deployment of an effective peacekeeping force and dialogue to end the turmoil.
George Bush
He made the statement in conjunction with the third anniversary on Wednesday of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, which ended 21 years of civil war in that country.
"I am deeply troubled that innocent civilians continue to fall victim to the scourge of government- and rebel-led attacks in Darfur," Bush said.
"I remain firmly committed to the rapid deployment of an effective peacekeeping force coupled with serious political dialogue between the parties to help end the crisis and the suffering of the innocent people of Darfur," he added.
A new United Nations-mandated peacekeeping mission took over from an African Union mission on Jan. 1 in the western region of Darfur, where some 200,000 people have died and more than 2 million made homeless since ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan’s Arab-dominated regime in February 2003.
The new mission, the U.N.’s largest, will eventually consist of 20,000 troops and 6,000 police and civilian personnel, but only around 9,000 troops and police are currently in place.
Relations between Sudan and the United States have long been strained, most recently over the near five-year Darfur conflict where Washington has accused Khartoum of genocide.
A U.S. diplomat and his driver were murdered on New Year’s day in Khartoum, a day after Bush signed a law aimed at piling economic pressure on the government in Khartoum.
Bush also said Tuesday that Washington remained committed with the implementation of all aspects of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which created a southern autonomous government in Sudan and two separate armies.
North Sudanese troops completed their withdrawal from oil rich areas of the south, a southern general said on Tuesday, heading off the latest brewing north-south crisis.
A joint defense council had given the northern troops until Wednesday to leave after they failed to meet a December 31 deadline that was part of a deal that saw southern ex-rebels return to government after resigning in October.
Their withdrawal from the unity cabinet was the worst crisis to hit the 2005 peace deal that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war. An estimated two million people were killed and another 6 million displaced in the two-decade-long conflict.
"While much progress has been made in forming a government of national unity, sharing wealth, and respecting a cessation of hostilities, many challenges remain to the agreement’s full implementation," Bush said.
He called for efforts to ensure that a nationwide census was immediately conducted to allow national elections to be held on time next year.
"The work of Sudan’s border commission also must be reinvigorated, along with efforts to redeploy troops away from disputed border areas, to reduce the chances of a return to violence," he said.
"The Comprehensive Peace Agreement laid the groundwork for lasting peace and unity for all of Sudan, and its vigorous application will continue to underpin U.S. involvement across Sudan," Bush said.
(AFP)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sudan attacked UN hybrid force in Darfur – Ban Ki-Moon
Wednesday 9 January 2008.
January 8, 2008 (NEW YORK) — UN chief has condemned today attack by the Sudanese army against a supply convoy for the hybrid peacekeeping force last night in western Darfur and lodged a protest with Khartoum.
Ban Ki-Moon with members of the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) (Reuters).
Early Tuesday the UNAMID said in a press statement that a road convoy was attacked on Monday night while it was on a re-supply mission to hybrid force sites in the area between Um Baru, Tine and Kulbus, in West Darfur.
"The Secretary-General condemns this attack in the strongest possible terms and stresses that, for the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping Operation to be able to perform its mandated functions, the Government of Sudan has to provide unequivocal guarantees that there will be no recurrence of such activities by its forces." Ban Ki-Moon said.
He further added "In this connection, the United Nations is lodging a protest with the Government of Sudan."
The area where the attack occurred has witnessed violent clashes between the government of Sudan and rebel Justice and Equality Movement. Also, the UNAMID air operations have been restricted due to the security concerns.
A Sudanese civilian driver suffered seven gunshot wounds and vehicles were damaged during the attack on the convoy. He was evacuated to UNAMID headquarters in the Darfur town of Al-Fasher for medical care.
The South African peacekeepers protecting the convoy did not return fire, and no UNAMID casualties were incurred during the attack on the convoy. However a tanker truck was destroyed and an armored personnel carrier was damaged.
APPARENT MISTAKE
Sudanese troops apparently mistook the U.N. convoy for Darfur rebels who operate in the area near the border with Chad. "It was night time, it seems the (Sudanese) soldiers lost their calm," a UN official told the Associated Press.
The senior official working with the hybrid force said the Sudanese soldiers stopped shooting after 10 minutes and let the peacekeepers go.
U.N. vehicles are painted white and marked with the U.N. logo to signal their neutrality. It was unclear how the Sudanese soldiers could have mistaken them for rebels, who usually drive camouflaged pickup trucks and don’t have armored vehicles.
The head of the peacekeeping mission, Rodolphe Adada, consulted with Sudan’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and both sides "agreed to launch an urgent investigation," UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.
"The is the first time UNAMID is attacked, and we hope it will be the last," Mezni said. "We are in Darfur to bring peace, not to fight."
REBEL’S CONDEMNATION
The two main rebel movements condemned the attack and describe it as first clear manifestation of Khartoum will to undermine the Longley awaited peacekeeping force to protect Darfur Civilians, they told Sudan Tribune.
Abdelwahid al-Nur the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement expressed his strongest condemnation of the attack. He further warned "Without security there will no talks with Khartoum government."
While the spokesperson of the Justice and Equality Ahmed Hussein Adam who also condemned the attack said "This precedent shows clearly that Sudanese government working to abort the UNAMID mission and challenge the will of the international community in Darfur."
Both urged the international community to strongly condemn "the Sudanese aggression" against the hybrid peacekeeping force.
Last month in a report to the Security Council, Ban warned that the UNAMID mission was at risk, because the force still lacks crucial components, including a ground transport unit, 18 transport helicopters and six light tactical helicopters meant to provide air mobility and firepower to protect civilians and peacekeepers.
Further Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of the UN peacekeeping department, told the Security Council in November that UNAMID risked humiliation if it was not provided with the required muscle and firepower. He specifically insisted on the importance of including four key non-African units to the force: a Thai infantry battalion, two Nepalese special forces contingents and a Scandinavian engineering unit.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission that began Jan. 1 is the latest international attempt to end the violence. A poorly equipped African Union force of about 7,000 soldiers was unable to end the chaos and suffered dozens of casualties of its own.
The hybrid force formally took over from the poorly equipped African Union mission aims to restore security and protect civilians and create conducive conditions for peace in Darfur.
According to the UN experts more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million others forced to flee their homes since fighting began in 2003 between Government forces and rebel groups.
(ST)
Some information for this report provided by AP.
January 8, 2008 (NEW YORK) — UN chief has condemned today attack by the Sudanese army against a supply convoy for the hybrid peacekeeping force last night in western Darfur and lodged a protest with Khartoum.
Ban Ki-Moon with members of the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) (Reuters).
Early Tuesday the UNAMID said in a press statement that a road convoy was attacked on Monday night while it was on a re-supply mission to hybrid force sites in the area between Um Baru, Tine and Kulbus, in West Darfur.
"The Secretary-General condemns this attack in the strongest possible terms and stresses that, for the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping Operation to be able to perform its mandated functions, the Government of Sudan has to provide unequivocal guarantees that there will be no recurrence of such activities by its forces." Ban Ki-Moon said.
He further added "In this connection, the United Nations is lodging a protest with the Government of Sudan."
The area where the attack occurred has witnessed violent clashes between the government of Sudan and rebel Justice and Equality Movement. Also, the UNAMID air operations have been restricted due to the security concerns.
A Sudanese civilian driver suffered seven gunshot wounds and vehicles were damaged during the attack on the convoy. He was evacuated to UNAMID headquarters in the Darfur town of Al-Fasher for medical care.
The South African peacekeepers protecting the convoy did not return fire, and no UNAMID casualties were incurred during the attack on the convoy. However a tanker truck was destroyed and an armored personnel carrier was damaged.
APPARENT MISTAKE
Sudanese troops apparently mistook the U.N. convoy for Darfur rebels who operate in the area near the border with Chad. "It was night time, it seems the (Sudanese) soldiers lost their calm," a UN official told the Associated Press.
The senior official working with the hybrid force said the Sudanese soldiers stopped shooting after 10 minutes and let the peacekeepers go.
U.N. vehicles are painted white and marked with the U.N. logo to signal their neutrality. It was unclear how the Sudanese soldiers could have mistaken them for rebels, who usually drive camouflaged pickup trucks and don’t have armored vehicles.
The head of the peacekeeping mission, Rodolphe Adada, consulted with Sudan’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and both sides "agreed to launch an urgent investigation," UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.
"The is the first time UNAMID is attacked, and we hope it will be the last," Mezni said. "We are in Darfur to bring peace, not to fight."
REBEL’S CONDEMNATION
The two main rebel movements condemned the attack and describe it as first clear manifestation of Khartoum will to undermine the Longley awaited peacekeeping force to protect Darfur Civilians, they told Sudan Tribune.
Abdelwahid al-Nur the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement expressed his strongest condemnation of the attack. He further warned "Without security there will no talks with Khartoum government."
While the spokesperson of the Justice and Equality Ahmed Hussein Adam who also condemned the attack said "This precedent shows clearly that Sudanese government working to abort the UNAMID mission and challenge the will of the international community in Darfur."
Both urged the international community to strongly condemn "the Sudanese aggression" against the hybrid peacekeeping force.
Last month in a report to the Security Council, Ban warned that the UNAMID mission was at risk, because the force still lacks crucial components, including a ground transport unit, 18 transport helicopters and six light tactical helicopters meant to provide air mobility and firepower to protect civilians and peacekeepers.
Further Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of the UN peacekeeping department, told the Security Council in November that UNAMID risked humiliation if it was not provided with the required muscle and firepower. He specifically insisted on the importance of including four key non-African units to the force: a Thai infantry battalion, two Nepalese special forces contingents and a Scandinavian engineering unit.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission that began Jan. 1 is the latest international attempt to end the violence. A poorly equipped African Union force of about 7,000 soldiers was unable to end the chaos and suffered dozens of casualties of its own.
The hybrid force formally took over from the poorly equipped African Union mission aims to restore security and protect civilians and create conducive conditions for peace in Darfur.
According to the UN experts more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.2 million others forced to flee their homes since fighting began in 2003 between Government forces and rebel groups.
(ST)
Some information for this report provided by AP.
UN spokesperson in Sudan calls it quits
Wednesday 9 January 2008.
January 8, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The spokesperson for the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) Radhia Achouri announced that she will leave the post by the end of this week.
Former UN SG envoy, Jan Pronk, with the UNMIS spokeswoman Radhia Achouri.
“I was privileged to be part of the UNMIS build-up when it was the Mission was at it advance stage” Achouri said in a statement sent by email.
The announcement came as a joint African-United Nations force (UNAMID) took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur last week and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
The Tunisian born UN officer was frequently subject to a hostile media campaign and threats by government agencies including the Sudanese army.
The Sudanese government has been irritated by Achouri‘s statements on issues such as obstacles facing humanitarian access in Darfur and lack of compliance by northern troops on withdrawal from the South.
Last May the Sudanese justice Minister Mohamed Ali Al-Mardi warned Achouri not to go down the same road of the expelled UN Special Representative to Sudan Jan Pronk. The latter was expelled by Khartoum in October 2006 for exposing information on the performance of the Sudanese army in Darfur.
Achouri was considered close to Pronk during his time in Sudan.
The UN spokesperson said that she had an “enriching experience” in UNMIS which was mandated with supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the North and South signed in 2005.
Some observers who spoke to Sudan Tribune last year noted that the UNMIS has been severely weakened since the expulsion of Pronk. They also said that UN leadership in New York was not adequately supporting the mission in face of Khartoum’s intimidation.
Nonetheless Achouri said that she wishes that the year 2008 “would be the year of comprehensive peace in Sudan, for the people deserves it”.
(ST)
January 8, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The spokesperson for the UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) Radhia Achouri announced that she will leave the post by the end of this week.
Former UN SG envoy, Jan Pronk, with the UNMIS spokeswoman Radhia Achouri.
“I was privileged to be part of the UNMIS build-up when it was the Mission was at it advance stage” Achouri said in a statement sent by email.
The announcement came as a joint African-United Nations force (UNAMID) took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur last week and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
The Tunisian born UN officer was frequently subject to a hostile media campaign and threats by government agencies including the Sudanese army.
The Sudanese government has been irritated by Achouri‘s statements on issues such as obstacles facing humanitarian access in Darfur and lack of compliance by northern troops on withdrawal from the South.
Last May the Sudanese justice Minister Mohamed Ali Al-Mardi warned Achouri not to go down the same road of the expelled UN Special Representative to Sudan Jan Pronk. The latter was expelled by Khartoum in October 2006 for exposing information on the performance of the Sudanese army in Darfur.
Achouri was considered close to Pronk during his time in Sudan.
The UN spokesperson said that she had an “enriching experience” in UNMIS which was mandated with supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the North and South signed in 2005.
Some observers who spoke to Sudan Tribune last year noted that the UNMIS has been severely weakened since the expulsion of Pronk. They also said that UN leadership in New York was not adequately supporting the mission in face of Khartoum’s intimidation.
Nonetheless Achouri said that she wishes that the year 2008 “would be the year of comprehensive peace in Sudan, for the people deserves it”.
(ST)
Saturday, January 5, 2008
A Strategy for Success in Sirte
Date: 11/19/2007
Author(s): Colin Thomas-Jensen and John Prendergast
If not revamped, the Darfur peace process will almost certainly fail. Though hopes were high for talks that convened in early November, the United Nations/African Union joint mediation team made a critical mistake by trying to unify the rebels and assemble them all in one place without a clearly defined vision for an end state that resonates with Darfur’s civilian population. Most of the myriad rebel groups—and all of the significant ones—declined to attend the November talks in Sirte, Libya because they feared a repeat of the Abuja peace process that produced the failed 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, or DPA.
But it is not too late. The Sirte talks can be rescued when they reconvene in December[1] if the mediation team and its international partners, including the United States, take immediate action to reorient the content, to restructure the process, and to build the requisite leverage needed to compel the negotiating parties to reach a final agreement.
Over the last decade, political negotiations in Sudan have achieved one major success—the increasingly fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA—and resulted in one major failure—the DPA.[2] The international community can draw clear lessons from each process:
Comprehensive Peace Agreement: The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African regional organization, mediated between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM. The IGAD mediators articulated a clear vision around an end state that the southern Sudanese population strongly supports: self-determination. Senior diplomats from a “troika” of countries—the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway [3] —supported and coordinated closely with the IGAD mediation team to pressure both parties to make the difficult compromises that ultimately yielded an agreement.[4]
Darfur Peace Agreement: The talks in Abuja, Nigeria that led to the failed 2006 DPA between the government and one rebel faction were also mediated by a regional organization—the AU—but the roles and responsibilities of other international actors were muddled at best. Chad, a country directly involved in the conflict through its support for various rebel factions, was a “co-mediator,” while Libya and Nigeria served as “facilitators.” The United States, U.K., United Nations, European Union, and Arab League were five of the 16 “observers.” The overabundance of actors lacked a cohesive coordinating mechanism and preferred infrequent visits from senior diplomats to consistent high-level diplomacy.
These lessons—clear end state, tight structure, and focused leverage—have not yet been applied to the Sirte talks. A clear strategy for success should reflect the lessons learned from the success of the CPA and failure of the DPA and include new arrangements and approaches on the content, process, and leverage that guide the talks.
A. Content
Recommendation: The joint mediation team should unveil an envisioned end state in the form of a draft agreement that reflects the widely shared concerns of the principal victims of this conflict—Darfurian civilians who have been displaced from their homes.
The issues on the table in Libya are complex, with deep disparities between the positions of the government and the rebel groups. Rather than wait for the parties to come up with their own proposals, the joint mediation team needs to author a draft agreement that begins to bridge this gap by adopting the perspective of a much broader array of stakeholders, particularly the civilian victims of the conflict. A draft agreement that clearly addresses the interests of the people of Darfur and rebel groups will also serve as an incentive for the rebel leaders absent from Sirte to attend the talks when they reconvene in December.
The following four issues must be part of a solution, and the proposals shared widely to build support throughout Darfur.
1) Compensation: Compensation, or diya, is a central part of traditional conflict resolution in Darfur. The primary purposes of compensation are to recognize the harm done to a community and (partially [5] ) satisfy the victims’ demand for justice. In Darfur, this can only occur when the government of Sudan, as the party most responsible for systematic killing, rape, torture, and looting in Darfur, adequately compensates victims for stolen livestock, land, goods, etc. Moreover, compensation for Darfur must be separate and distinct from any reconstruction and development funds that may be offered once peace is achieved. The DPA authorized a compensation fund of $30 million for Darfur. Using a very crude calculation, equal distribution among the 2.5 million displaced people would amount to a $12 payout for each victim. Given the scale of the economic losses in Darfur and the complexity of determining and distributing compensation, the government of Sudan must allocate substantially more funds and agree to an international monitoring mechanism to ensure that those funds are dispersed fairly.
2) Dismantling the militias: The people of Darfur will simply not accept any agreement that fails to establish a clear, internationally monitored process to disarm the Janjaweed militias. By contrast, the DPA holds the government of Sudan responsible for disarming its own proxies, a responsibility that the government has pledged to honor and then ignored on at least six occasions. Meanwhile, a disarmament program must be devised with the goal of formally dismantling the structures of violence in Darfur: the Janjaweed militias and the various rebel factions. The mediation should seek agreement on an internationally monitored process to assemble these groups, collect their heavy weapons, and implement an aggressive program to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate—a process known as DDR—combatants back into their communities. Moreover, the process must take into account the realities on the ground. Although weapons have flooded the region since the crisis began in 2003, many farmers and herders in Darfur have carried rifles for years to defend their land and livestock. DDR programs should seek to take apart the militias without disrupting the traditional livelihoods of civilians.
3) Darfur autonomy: The question of how Darfur should be administered—and whether it should remain as three states or establish a regional government, as was the case until 1989—is at the center of political negotiations over Darfur’s future. The DPA establishes a transition period before a regional vote on Darfur’s status, to be held no later than mid-2010. However, some rebel factions continue to demand an immediate return to a regional government, while others have openly called for self-determination and even independence. The mediation team must work with the parties to establish consensus on the question of autonomy before moving on to the specifics of power sharing.
4) Political representation for Darfur: The mediation team in Libya must tackle the thorny question of how to broaden the power-sharing arrangements beyond the DPA signatories to include the rebel factions that did not sign, and, most importantly, a broader set of stakeholders and civil society groups from Darfur. The power-sharing provisions in the DPA failed to address a major root cause of the rebellion in 2003: a collective demand by the people of Darfur for greater control over their affairs. Only one of three rebel factions at the talks—the SLA group led by Minni Minnawi, or SLA/MM—signed the DPA under pressure from the mediators and international actors. Encouraged by the international community, the government of Sudan has implemented the agreement’s political provisions and awarded the SLA/MM with positions in the government. Further, in Abuja the Sudanese government’s National Congress Party, or NCP, used the power sharing talks to drive a contentious wedge between the southern Sudanese and the SPLM, on the one hand, and Darfurians, on the other, exploiting the fact that the SPLM opposes a power sharing deal for Darfur because it would reduce the Southerners’ hard-fought political gains under the CPA. The mediation team must preserve the CPA as the national framework for a national political solution, and they must consult directly with the SPLM on the draft agreement to address those concerns.
B. Process
Process Recommendation #1: The joint mediation team must immediately broaden the process to ensure that all stakeholders in Darfur have ownership over the envisioned end state and, eventually, the final agreement.
The Abuja peace talks that produced the DPA were between an unrepresentative government in Khartoum and the three rebel groups recognized by the AU mediators (at least two significant rebel factions were not at the table). The one rebel group that ultimately signed the DPA—Minni Minawi’s SLA faction—lacked and still lacks popular support in Darfur. After the agreement, many of Minawi’s forces became paramilitaries for the government of Sudan, committed atrocities, and engaged in widespread banditry and attacks on humanitarians and peacekeepers.
The AU mediators failed to give the people of Darfur and the victims of the conflict—particularly women, internally displaced persons, and non-aligned Arab groups—an adequate voice at the talks, opting to secure buy in from Darfurians after the agreement was signed through a process called the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation. However, the DPA was dead on arrival, rendering moot the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue before it could begin.
Unless of the various stakeholders in Darfur can participate formally in the peace process, any agreement reached will almost certainly lack broad support from the people of Darfur and collapse as spectacularly as did the DPA. The talks must include the following groups:
1) Sudan’s Government of National Unity: The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the civil war between the government and rebels based in the South, established a Government of National Unity between Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party and the Southern People’s Liberation Movement. The SPLM’s decision in October to recall its ministers from the unity government has cast a spotlight on the ruling party’s failure to implement key provisions of the CPA and sparked a deepening political crisis in Khartoum. Urgent action is needed on the part of the international community to re-engage in the North-South peace process and prevent a return to war in the South, but also to ensure that the Government’s delegation in Libya is genuinely representative of both parties in the Government of National Unity. If the NCP and the SPLM do not share ownership over an eventual agreement for Darfur, the agreement will most likely die during implementation.
2) The rebel signatory to the DPA, Minni Minawi’s SLA faction: As a result of the DPA, Minni Minawi and some members of his SLA faction were formally incorporated into the unity government. The government-led attack in October on forces loyal to Minawi at Muhajaria in North Darfur demonstrates the total breakdown of the DPA and bolsters the argument of some non-signatory factions that the DPA should not serve as a platform for negotiations. Minawi and other members of his faction within the Sudanese government, including the recently appointed governor of West Darfur, could turn out to be the spoilers in Libya. It is conceivable that they will fight even harder than the NCP not to reopen the power-sharing provisions of the DPA in order to protect their jobs. These groups have the “legitimacy” of being signatories to the DPA and can and likely will be used by the NCP to act as front men to provide resistance, from a legal perspective, to substantially reworking the agreement. To achieve new power-sharing arrangements, the mediators will likely need to broker a side deal in which Minawi stands down from his position as Special Assistant to the President and head of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, the regional governing body established under the DPA.
3) Non-signatories and other rebel alliances: Most of the rebel groups that did not sign the DPA met in Arusha, Tanzania in August and “presented a common platform on power sharing, wealth sharing, security arrangements, land, and humanitarian issues, for the final negotiations.” [6] While at the time the meeting was hailed as a breakthrough, the divisions within the rebel groups have continued to deepen and some rebel leaders intend to hold the process hostage by their absence. Abdul Wahid of the SLA refuses to join the negotiations until the U.N./AU hybrid force deploys, disarms the Janjaweed, and removes Arab populations that have settled on non-Arab land. Other rebel leaders have rejected Libya as a venue and demanded the replacement of the head of the AU delegation, Tanzanian diplomat Salim Ahmed Salim. Coordinated shuttle diplomacy, whereby envoys travel throughout the region to engage the holdouts, can overcome these obstacles to peace.
4) Civil Society: The U.N./AU mediation team can accomplish three critical tasks by establishing a formal mechanism for other stakeholders in Darfur to have a voice at the Sirte talks. First, greater civil society participation increases the likelihood that a broader section of Darfur will feel ownership of an agreement and help garner support from inside Darfur for both the process and the outcomes. The process of selecting civil society representation must be carefully guarded from outside influence, particularly by the NCP. Many “civil society” participants at the Abuja talks supported NCP positions, suggesting that the ruling party had a guiding hand in deciding who would attend. Second, an assertive mediation can leverage the presence of Darfurian women, displaced persons’ groups, tribal leaders (including Arab groups), and other civil society actors to blunt the impact of rebel divisions. The rebels are fighting with each other for the right to control Darfur’s political destiny, but faced with the active participation of the people they purport to represent, they will face pressure to set aside the personality squabbles on which most of the divisions are based and deal with the core issues on the table. Non-armed Darfurian groups could be represented formally at the talks by distinguished members of civil society, identified by the AU and U.N. as part of their initiative. Third, it raises the helpful prospect that a future administration or local governments in Darfur will not be made up exclusively of rebels and the ruling party, but will include significant representatives of other key sectors in Darfur.[7]
Process Recommendation #2: The countries with the most leverage—the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom—should deploy full-time and fully staffed special envoys to the region to support the joint mediation.
In conflicts where atrocities are committed on the scale of Darfur, warring parties rarely reach durable peace agreements without sustained external pressure. And pressure does not come via phone calls from Washington, Paris, London, Beijing, and elsewhere. High-level diplomatic presence at the talks is essential, and nations participating at the talks should base senior diplomats with appropriate staff in Libya.
To avoid a repeat of the Abuja talks, where a cacophony of mid-level international voices failed to compel compromise between the parties, the United States, U.K., France, and China should convene an informal “quartet” to support the joint mediation team. All four countries are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and have senior diplomats focusing exclusively on Sudan. This quartet should agree on carrots and sticks to cajole and nudge the parties toward an agreement and insistently monitor its implementation. [8]
The United States specifically should designate a full-time senior envoy as the point person for a comprehensive strategy for peace in Sudan, including the Sirte talks and implementation of the CPA. At present, there is no clear leader on Sudan within the U.S. government and the policy is incoherent. The lines of policymaking authority for Sudan at the State Department are muddled and competing U.S. policy agendas—Darfur, the CPA, and Sudan’s cooperation on counterterrorism—will only be resolved with strong White House leadership. [9] President Bush should make clear that his special envoy is in charge and ensure that s/he has an experienced field-based staff to implement a carefully calibrated strategy for comprehensive peace.
Process Recommendation #3: The mediation team—accompanied whenever possible by special envoys from the United States, China, France, and the U.K.—need to take the draft agreement on the road and conduct shuttle diplomacy.
Aggressive shuttle diplomacy can address the decisions of key rebel leaders not to attend and counter the negative influence of regional states.
1) If rebel leaders refuse to come to the peace talks, then the mediation team and its international partners have to take the process to them. The most high profile rebel hold-out is Abdul Wahid, a Fur and the founder of the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA. Despite a minor military presence on the ground (in western Jebel Marra), Abdul Wahid is a folk hero among many internally displaced persons, or IDPs, especially among his Fur people. His decision not to attend peace talks until the hybrid peacekeeping force arrives is popular in the IDP camps, and Abdul Wahid risks political suicide if he buckles to international pressure and travels to Libya. However, he must not be allowed to hold the process hostage by his absence. The mediators and special envoys must work with the French to pressure Abdul Wahid to appoint a representative to attend the talks in Sirte, enabling him to save face publicly but engage politically. If he refuses, the talks should go ahead regardless. Abdul Wahid lacks the military capacity to play spoiler, and if the negotiations gather momentum without him he will likely be compelled to join. Diplomats supporting the Sirte talks must work equally hard to bring other rebel holdouts—including Khalil Ibrahim (JEM), Ahmed Abdel Shafie (SLA), Bahar Idriss Abu Garda (JEM), and Khamis Abdullah Abakar (SLA)—into the process. Though many rebel leaders object to Libya as a venue for the talks, stronger international engagement through senior diplomats and strong draft agreement would serve as an effective carrot.
2) Since the start of the conflict, Chad, Eritrea, and Libya have jockeyed for influence with the rebels and maintain considerable sway over Darfur’s rebel factions. These neighboring states have strong interests in the political future of Sudan and the potential to undermine progress at the negotiating table if they feel their interests are not being met. Eritrea has hosted most of the rebel leadership at one time or another and the Eritrean government has supported multiple initiatives to unify various rebel factions. [10] The Chadian government has openly supported various Darfur rebel factions since early 2006 and developed a symbiotic relationship with rebel commanders who have operated in tandem with the Chadian army in exchange for logistical and materiel support from N’Djamena. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has supported nearly all sides of the conflict at one time or another, and retains considerable influence through his ability to infuse the conflict with money and weapons.
The mediation team and its international partners should designate lead nations to use their leverage with the rebels to respect a ceasefire agreement and adopt realistic positions at the negotiating table.
a) Eritrea: The international community should seek to engage Eritrea through an intermediary that President Issayas Afeworki trusts—Norway. Eritrea has long involvement with Sudan’s civil wars, and recently brokered a deal that ended a simmering conflict between the NCP and rebels based in Eastern Sudan. [11] Although Issayas is increasingly isolated internationally and refuses to meet with the United States, the Norwegian government retains good relations with Eritrea; Norwegian diplomats can be the international community’s liaison with Issayas.
b) Chad: Despite the recent accusations of child trafficking against French citizens, the French government retains considerable leverage with Chadian President Idriss Deby. Chad hosts 1,100 French military forces, most of whom will serve as the backbone of a European Union protection force deploying to eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic in the coming months. [12] As a front-line state, Chad has a strong interest in the outcome of the talks and how the rebel factions it supports will be represented in the final agreement on political arrangements.
c) Libya: Because of gradually improving relations between Tripoli and Washington, particularly on counterterrorism issues, the United States is best suited to blunt Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s bizarre public statements and his predilection for quick fixes at the negotiating table. Gaddafi has hosted several “peace summits” in Tripoli to mediate between Khartoum and N’Djamena and to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and eastern Chad, and agreements he hails as breakthroughs have universally failed to achieve anything on the ground. Many rebel groups are justifiably critical of Libya as a venue for the talks after Gaddafi’s recent comment that the crisis in Darfur is a “quarrel over a camel.”
C. Leverage
Leverage Recommendation #1: The U.N. Security Council must establish clear costs for parties that obstruct the peace process.
As ENOUGH has consistently argued, the international community must build leverage on all parties to the conflict by imposing and enforcing multilateral penalties on individuals that commit crimes against humanity, obstruct deployment of UNAMID, the U.N./AU hybrid force, and/or obstruct the peace process. Some key actors, including the United States, have argued that punitive actions such as sanctions and divestment could hurt the peace process. Nothing is further from the truth, as successful negotiations require both incentives and pressures. The U.N. Security Council must provide the stick needed to concentrate minds on negotiations and exact concessions from negotiating parties with a demonstrated knack for digging in their heels. The international community’s failure to respond to the recent dramatic upsurge in violence in Darfur and the government of Sudan’s clear strategy to slow deployment of UNAMID is fuelling a sense of impunity on all sides that will ultimately torpedo the peace process.
Leverage Recommendation #2: The United States should provide declassified intelligence to help the International Criminal Court build cases and execute additional indictments against those most responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Responding to pressure from U.S. citizens, the Bush administration disregarded its strong ideological objections to the International Criminal Court and abstained from the Security Council vote to refer the Darfur case in March 2005. But the United States has not provided information to assist Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s investigation. U.S. intelligence services are closely monitoring communications within Sudan, listening to conversations between Sudanese officials and others that could implicate them in crimes committed in Darfur. Earlier this year, a senior U.S. official told ENOUGH that the Bush administration has files that outline the involvement of many senior regime officials in pursuing a policy of scorched earth ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The administration has opted not to hand these documents over to the Court, arguing that the prospect of indictment and arrest could force the regime into “survival mode” and cause it to attack the camps for displaced persons in Darfur. That this argument does not follow is demonstrated most clearly by recent government attacks on camps, the forced relocation of displaced persons, and the expulsion of a senior U.N. humanitarian official in South Darfur. The regime is already in “survival mode.” Deeply unpopular in Sudan, the NCP cannot win national elections scheduled for 2009 without rigging the vote, nor has it backed away from a military solution in Darfur. The United States and others must support the ICC’s investigation. In turn, the Security Council must be prepared to suspend the investigation if a peace agreement for Darfur is signed and implemented.
Conclusion
As noted in ENOUGH’s most recent strategy paper, “An All-Sudan Solution: Linking Darfur and the South,” a strategy for success in Sirte is merely one component of a comprehensive approach to lasting peace in Sudan. The NCP has consistently taken advantage of the international community’s inconsistent focus and failure to articulate a clear path toward peace in Darfur and the democratic transformation of Sudan, as promised by the CPA. While the international focus was ending the war in the South, Khartoum bought itself time to pursue its scorched-earth campaign in Darfur. Facing international condemnation over Darfur and haphazard diplomatic efforts to end the Darfur crisis, Khartoum worked assiduously to undermine the implementation of the CPA. Thus, although the regime is constantly on the defensive, it maintains the initiative, runs circles around the international community’s efforts to resolve both crises, and continues to grind the people of Sudan under its heel.
The only way for the international community to break out of this deadly rut and take the initiative is by devoting significant resources, setting clear objectives, and building the coordinated leverage necessary to achieve a peace agreement for Darfur and the full implementation of the CPA. Another failed peace process for Darfur and an unraveling of the CPA could plunge the Sudan into unprecedented misery. This, at all costs, must be avoided.
enoughproject.org
Author(s): Colin Thomas-Jensen and John Prendergast
If not revamped, the Darfur peace process will almost certainly fail. Though hopes were high for talks that convened in early November, the United Nations/African Union joint mediation team made a critical mistake by trying to unify the rebels and assemble them all in one place without a clearly defined vision for an end state that resonates with Darfur’s civilian population. Most of the myriad rebel groups—and all of the significant ones—declined to attend the November talks in Sirte, Libya because they feared a repeat of the Abuja peace process that produced the failed 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, or DPA.
But it is not too late. The Sirte talks can be rescued when they reconvene in December[1] if the mediation team and its international partners, including the United States, take immediate action to reorient the content, to restructure the process, and to build the requisite leverage needed to compel the negotiating parties to reach a final agreement.
Over the last decade, political negotiations in Sudan have achieved one major success—the increasingly fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA—and resulted in one major failure—the DPA.[2] The international community can draw clear lessons from each process:
Comprehensive Peace Agreement: The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African regional organization, mediated between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM. The IGAD mediators articulated a clear vision around an end state that the southern Sudanese population strongly supports: self-determination. Senior diplomats from a “troika” of countries—the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway [3] —supported and coordinated closely with the IGAD mediation team to pressure both parties to make the difficult compromises that ultimately yielded an agreement.[4]
Darfur Peace Agreement: The talks in Abuja, Nigeria that led to the failed 2006 DPA between the government and one rebel faction were also mediated by a regional organization—the AU—but the roles and responsibilities of other international actors were muddled at best. Chad, a country directly involved in the conflict through its support for various rebel factions, was a “co-mediator,” while Libya and Nigeria served as “facilitators.” The United States, U.K., United Nations, European Union, and Arab League were five of the 16 “observers.” The overabundance of actors lacked a cohesive coordinating mechanism and preferred infrequent visits from senior diplomats to consistent high-level diplomacy.
These lessons—clear end state, tight structure, and focused leverage—have not yet been applied to the Sirte talks. A clear strategy for success should reflect the lessons learned from the success of the CPA and failure of the DPA and include new arrangements and approaches on the content, process, and leverage that guide the talks.
A. Content
Recommendation: The joint mediation team should unveil an envisioned end state in the form of a draft agreement that reflects the widely shared concerns of the principal victims of this conflict—Darfurian civilians who have been displaced from their homes.
The issues on the table in Libya are complex, with deep disparities between the positions of the government and the rebel groups. Rather than wait for the parties to come up with their own proposals, the joint mediation team needs to author a draft agreement that begins to bridge this gap by adopting the perspective of a much broader array of stakeholders, particularly the civilian victims of the conflict. A draft agreement that clearly addresses the interests of the people of Darfur and rebel groups will also serve as an incentive for the rebel leaders absent from Sirte to attend the talks when they reconvene in December.
The following four issues must be part of a solution, and the proposals shared widely to build support throughout Darfur.
1) Compensation: Compensation, or diya, is a central part of traditional conflict resolution in Darfur. The primary purposes of compensation are to recognize the harm done to a community and (partially [5] ) satisfy the victims’ demand for justice. In Darfur, this can only occur when the government of Sudan, as the party most responsible for systematic killing, rape, torture, and looting in Darfur, adequately compensates victims for stolen livestock, land, goods, etc. Moreover, compensation for Darfur must be separate and distinct from any reconstruction and development funds that may be offered once peace is achieved. The DPA authorized a compensation fund of $30 million for Darfur. Using a very crude calculation, equal distribution among the 2.5 million displaced people would amount to a $12 payout for each victim. Given the scale of the economic losses in Darfur and the complexity of determining and distributing compensation, the government of Sudan must allocate substantially more funds and agree to an international monitoring mechanism to ensure that those funds are dispersed fairly.
2) Dismantling the militias: The people of Darfur will simply not accept any agreement that fails to establish a clear, internationally monitored process to disarm the Janjaweed militias. By contrast, the DPA holds the government of Sudan responsible for disarming its own proxies, a responsibility that the government has pledged to honor and then ignored on at least six occasions. Meanwhile, a disarmament program must be devised with the goal of formally dismantling the structures of violence in Darfur: the Janjaweed militias and the various rebel factions. The mediation should seek agreement on an internationally monitored process to assemble these groups, collect their heavy weapons, and implement an aggressive program to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate—a process known as DDR—combatants back into their communities. Moreover, the process must take into account the realities on the ground. Although weapons have flooded the region since the crisis began in 2003, many farmers and herders in Darfur have carried rifles for years to defend their land and livestock. DDR programs should seek to take apart the militias without disrupting the traditional livelihoods of civilians.
3) Darfur autonomy: The question of how Darfur should be administered—and whether it should remain as three states or establish a regional government, as was the case until 1989—is at the center of political negotiations over Darfur’s future. The DPA establishes a transition period before a regional vote on Darfur’s status, to be held no later than mid-2010. However, some rebel factions continue to demand an immediate return to a regional government, while others have openly called for self-determination and even independence. The mediation team must work with the parties to establish consensus on the question of autonomy before moving on to the specifics of power sharing.
4) Political representation for Darfur: The mediation team in Libya must tackle the thorny question of how to broaden the power-sharing arrangements beyond the DPA signatories to include the rebel factions that did not sign, and, most importantly, a broader set of stakeholders and civil society groups from Darfur. The power-sharing provisions in the DPA failed to address a major root cause of the rebellion in 2003: a collective demand by the people of Darfur for greater control over their affairs. Only one of three rebel factions at the talks—the SLA group led by Minni Minnawi, or SLA/MM—signed the DPA under pressure from the mediators and international actors. Encouraged by the international community, the government of Sudan has implemented the agreement’s political provisions and awarded the SLA/MM with positions in the government. Further, in Abuja the Sudanese government’s National Congress Party, or NCP, used the power sharing talks to drive a contentious wedge between the southern Sudanese and the SPLM, on the one hand, and Darfurians, on the other, exploiting the fact that the SPLM opposes a power sharing deal for Darfur because it would reduce the Southerners’ hard-fought political gains under the CPA. The mediation team must preserve the CPA as the national framework for a national political solution, and they must consult directly with the SPLM on the draft agreement to address those concerns.
B. Process
Process Recommendation #1: The joint mediation team must immediately broaden the process to ensure that all stakeholders in Darfur have ownership over the envisioned end state and, eventually, the final agreement.
The Abuja peace talks that produced the DPA were between an unrepresentative government in Khartoum and the three rebel groups recognized by the AU mediators (at least two significant rebel factions were not at the table). The one rebel group that ultimately signed the DPA—Minni Minawi’s SLA faction—lacked and still lacks popular support in Darfur. After the agreement, many of Minawi’s forces became paramilitaries for the government of Sudan, committed atrocities, and engaged in widespread banditry and attacks on humanitarians and peacekeepers.
The AU mediators failed to give the people of Darfur and the victims of the conflict—particularly women, internally displaced persons, and non-aligned Arab groups—an adequate voice at the talks, opting to secure buy in from Darfurians after the agreement was signed through a process called the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation. However, the DPA was dead on arrival, rendering moot the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue before it could begin.
Unless of the various stakeholders in Darfur can participate formally in the peace process, any agreement reached will almost certainly lack broad support from the people of Darfur and collapse as spectacularly as did the DPA. The talks must include the following groups:
1) Sudan’s Government of National Unity: The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the civil war between the government and rebels based in the South, established a Government of National Unity between Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party and the Southern People’s Liberation Movement. The SPLM’s decision in October to recall its ministers from the unity government has cast a spotlight on the ruling party’s failure to implement key provisions of the CPA and sparked a deepening political crisis in Khartoum. Urgent action is needed on the part of the international community to re-engage in the North-South peace process and prevent a return to war in the South, but also to ensure that the Government’s delegation in Libya is genuinely representative of both parties in the Government of National Unity. If the NCP and the SPLM do not share ownership over an eventual agreement for Darfur, the agreement will most likely die during implementation.
2) The rebel signatory to the DPA, Minni Minawi’s SLA faction: As a result of the DPA, Minni Minawi and some members of his SLA faction were formally incorporated into the unity government. The government-led attack in October on forces loyal to Minawi at Muhajaria in North Darfur demonstrates the total breakdown of the DPA and bolsters the argument of some non-signatory factions that the DPA should not serve as a platform for negotiations. Minawi and other members of his faction within the Sudanese government, including the recently appointed governor of West Darfur, could turn out to be the spoilers in Libya. It is conceivable that they will fight even harder than the NCP not to reopen the power-sharing provisions of the DPA in order to protect their jobs. These groups have the “legitimacy” of being signatories to the DPA and can and likely will be used by the NCP to act as front men to provide resistance, from a legal perspective, to substantially reworking the agreement. To achieve new power-sharing arrangements, the mediators will likely need to broker a side deal in which Minawi stands down from his position as Special Assistant to the President and head of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, the regional governing body established under the DPA.
3) Non-signatories and other rebel alliances: Most of the rebel groups that did not sign the DPA met in Arusha, Tanzania in August and “presented a common platform on power sharing, wealth sharing, security arrangements, land, and humanitarian issues, for the final negotiations.” [6] While at the time the meeting was hailed as a breakthrough, the divisions within the rebel groups have continued to deepen and some rebel leaders intend to hold the process hostage by their absence. Abdul Wahid of the SLA refuses to join the negotiations until the U.N./AU hybrid force deploys, disarms the Janjaweed, and removes Arab populations that have settled on non-Arab land. Other rebel leaders have rejected Libya as a venue and demanded the replacement of the head of the AU delegation, Tanzanian diplomat Salim Ahmed Salim. Coordinated shuttle diplomacy, whereby envoys travel throughout the region to engage the holdouts, can overcome these obstacles to peace.
4) Civil Society: The U.N./AU mediation team can accomplish three critical tasks by establishing a formal mechanism for other stakeholders in Darfur to have a voice at the Sirte talks. First, greater civil society participation increases the likelihood that a broader section of Darfur will feel ownership of an agreement and help garner support from inside Darfur for both the process and the outcomes. The process of selecting civil society representation must be carefully guarded from outside influence, particularly by the NCP. Many “civil society” participants at the Abuja talks supported NCP positions, suggesting that the ruling party had a guiding hand in deciding who would attend. Second, an assertive mediation can leverage the presence of Darfurian women, displaced persons’ groups, tribal leaders (including Arab groups), and other civil society actors to blunt the impact of rebel divisions. The rebels are fighting with each other for the right to control Darfur’s political destiny, but faced with the active participation of the people they purport to represent, they will face pressure to set aside the personality squabbles on which most of the divisions are based and deal with the core issues on the table. Non-armed Darfurian groups could be represented formally at the talks by distinguished members of civil society, identified by the AU and U.N. as part of their initiative. Third, it raises the helpful prospect that a future administration or local governments in Darfur will not be made up exclusively of rebels and the ruling party, but will include significant representatives of other key sectors in Darfur.[7]
Process Recommendation #2: The countries with the most leverage—the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom—should deploy full-time and fully staffed special envoys to the region to support the joint mediation.
In conflicts where atrocities are committed on the scale of Darfur, warring parties rarely reach durable peace agreements without sustained external pressure. And pressure does not come via phone calls from Washington, Paris, London, Beijing, and elsewhere. High-level diplomatic presence at the talks is essential, and nations participating at the talks should base senior diplomats with appropriate staff in Libya.
To avoid a repeat of the Abuja talks, where a cacophony of mid-level international voices failed to compel compromise between the parties, the United States, U.K., France, and China should convene an informal “quartet” to support the joint mediation team. All four countries are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and have senior diplomats focusing exclusively on Sudan. This quartet should agree on carrots and sticks to cajole and nudge the parties toward an agreement and insistently monitor its implementation. [8]
The United States specifically should designate a full-time senior envoy as the point person for a comprehensive strategy for peace in Sudan, including the Sirte talks and implementation of the CPA. At present, there is no clear leader on Sudan within the U.S. government and the policy is incoherent. The lines of policymaking authority for Sudan at the State Department are muddled and competing U.S. policy agendas—Darfur, the CPA, and Sudan’s cooperation on counterterrorism—will only be resolved with strong White House leadership. [9] President Bush should make clear that his special envoy is in charge and ensure that s/he has an experienced field-based staff to implement a carefully calibrated strategy for comprehensive peace.
Process Recommendation #3: The mediation team—accompanied whenever possible by special envoys from the United States, China, France, and the U.K.—need to take the draft agreement on the road and conduct shuttle diplomacy.
Aggressive shuttle diplomacy can address the decisions of key rebel leaders not to attend and counter the negative influence of regional states.
1) If rebel leaders refuse to come to the peace talks, then the mediation team and its international partners have to take the process to them. The most high profile rebel hold-out is Abdul Wahid, a Fur and the founder of the Sudan Liberation Army, or SLA. Despite a minor military presence on the ground (in western Jebel Marra), Abdul Wahid is a folk hero among many internally displaced persons, or IDPs, especially among his Fur people. His decision not to attend peace talks until the hybrid peacekeeping force arrives is popular in the IDP camps, and Abdul Wahid risks political suicide if he buckles to international pressure and travels to Libya. However, he must not be allowed to hold the process hostage by his absence. The mediators and special envoys must work with the French to pressure Abdul Wahid to appoint a representative to attend the talks in Sirte, enabling him to save face publicly but engage politically. If he refuses, the talks should go ahead regardless. Abdul Wahid lacks the military capacity to play spoiler, and if the negotiations gather momentum without him he will likely be compelled to join. Diplomats supporting the Sirte talks must work equally hard to bring other rebel holdouts—including Khalil Ibrahim (JEM), Ahmed Abdel Shafie (SLA), Bahar Idriss Abu Garda (JEM), and Khamis Abdullah Abakar (SLA)—into the process. Though many rebel leaders object to Libya as a venue for the talks, stronger international engagement through senior diplomats and strong draft agreement would serve as an effective carrot.
2) Since the start of the conflict, Chad, Eritrea, and Libya have jockeyed for influence with the rebels and maintain considerable sway over Darfur’s rebel factions. These neighboring states have strong interests in the political future of Sudan and the potential to undermine progress at the negotiating table if they feel their interests are not being met. Eritrea has hosted most of the rebel leadership at one time or another and the Eritrean government has supported multiple initiatives to unify various rebel factions. [10] The Chadian government has openly supported various Darfur rebel factions since early 2006 and developed a symbiotic relationship with rebel commanders who have operated in tandem with the Chadian army in exchange for logistical and materiel support from N’Djamena. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has supported nearly all sides of the conflict at one time or another, and retains considerable influence through his ability to infuse the conflict with money and weapons.
The mediation team and its international partners should designate lead nations to use their leverage with the rebels to respect a ceasefire agreement and adopt realistic positions at the negotiating table.
a) Eritrea: The international community should seek to engage Eritrea through an intermediary that President Issayas Afeworki trusts—Norway. Eritrea has long involvement with Sudan’s civil wars, and recently brokered a deal that ended a simmering conflict between the NCP and rebels based in Eastern Sudan. [11] Although Issayas is increasingly isolated internationally and refuses to meet with the United States, the Norwegian government retains good relations with Eritrea; Norwegian diplomats can be the international community’s liaison with Issayas.
b) Chad: Despite the recent accusations of child trafficking against French citizens, the French government retains considerable leverage with Chadian President Idriss Deby. Chad hosts 1,100 French military forces, most of whom will serve as the backbone of a European Union protection force deploying to eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic in the coming months. [12] As a front-line state, Chad has a strong interest in the outcome of the talks and how the rebel factions it supports will be represented in the final agreement on political arrangements.
c) Libya: Because of gradually improving relations between Tripoli and Washington, particularly on counterterrorism issues, the United States is best suited to blunt Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s bizarre public statements and his predilection for quick fixes at the negotiating table. Gaddafi has hosted several “peace summits” in Tripoli to mediate between Khartoum and N’Djamena and to resolve the conflicts in Darfur and eastern Chad, and agreements he hails as breakthroughs have universally failed to achieve anything on the ground. Many rebel groups are justifiably critical of Libya as a venue for the talks after Gaddafi’s recent comment that the crisis in Darfur is a “quarrel over a camel.”
C. Leverage
Leverage Recommendation #1: The U.N. Security Council must establish clear costs for parties that obstruct the peace process.
As ENOUGH has consistently argued, the international community must build leverage on all parties to the conflict by imposing and enforcing multilateral penalties on individuals that commit crimes against humanity, obstruct deployment of UNAMID, the U.N./AU hybrid force, and/or obstruct the peace process. Some key actors, including the United States, have argued that punitive actions such as sanctions and divestment could hurt the peace process. Nothing is further from the truth, as successful negotiations require both incentives and pressures. The U.N. Security Council must provide the stick needed to concentrate minds on negotiations and exact concessions from negotiating parties with a demonstrated knack for digging in their heels. The international community’s failure to respond to the recent dramatic upsurge in violence in Darfur and the government of Sudan’s clear strategy to slow deployment of UNAMID is fuelling a sense of impunity on all sides that will ultimately torpedo the peace process.
Leverage Recommendation #2: The United States should provide declassified intelligence to help the International Criminal Court build cases and execute additional indictments against those most responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Responding to pressure from U.S. citizens, the Bush administration disregarded its strong ideological objections to the International Criminal Court and abstained from the Security Council vote to refer the Darfur case in March 2005. But the United States has not provided information to assist Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo’s investigation. U.S. intelligence services are closely monitoring communications within Sudan, listening to conversations between Sudanese officials and others that could implicate them in crimes committed in Darfur. Earlier this year, a senior U.S. official told ENOUGH that the Bush administration has files that outline the involvement of many senior regime officials in pursuing a policy of scorched earth ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The administration has opted not to hand these documents over to the Court, arguing that the prospect of indictment and arrest could force the regime into “survival mode” and cause it to attack the camps for displaced persons in Darfur. That this argument does not follow is demonstrated most clearly by recent government attacks on camps, the forced relocation of displaced persons, and the expulsion of a senior U.N. humanitarian official in South Darfur. The regime is already in “survival mode.” Deeply unpopular in Sudan, the NCP cannot win national elections scheduled for 2009 without rigging the vote, nor has it backed away from a military solution in Darfur. The United States and others must support the ICC’s investigation. In turn, the Security Council must be prepared to suspend the investigation if a peace agreement for Darfur is signed and implemented.
Conclusion
As noted in ENOUGH’s most recent strategy paper, “An All-Sudan Solution: Linking Darfur and the South,” a strategy for success in Sirte is merely one component of a comprehensive approach to lasting peace in Sudan. The NCP has consistently taken advantage of the international community’s inconsistent focus and failure to articulate a clear path toward peace in Darfur and the democratic transformation of Sudan, as promised by the CPA. While the international focus was ending the war in the South, Khartoum bought itself time to pursue its scorched-earth campaign in Darfur. Facing international condemnation over Darfur and haphazard diplomatic efforts to end the Darfur crisis, Khartoum worked assiduously to undermine the implementation of the CPA. Thus, although the regime is constantly on the defensive, it maintains the initiative, runs circles around the international community’s efforts to resolve both crises, and continues to grind the people of Sudan under its heel.
The only way for the international community to break out of this deadly rut and take the initiative is by devoting significant resources, setting clear objectives, and building the coordinated leverage necessary to achieve a peace agreement for Darfur and the full implementation of the CPA. Another failed peace process for Darfur and an unraveling of the CPA could plunge the Sudan into unprecedented misery. This, at all costs, must be avoided.
enoughproject.org
FEATURE: Darfur rebel Arabs under Sudan assault Wednesday 2 January 2008.
By Julie Flint
January 1, 2008 (LONDON) — Towards the end of the Abuja talks, an Arab intellectual sympathetic to the Darfur rebels remarked: ‘Ninety percent of the Arabs of Darfur are neutral so far. We cannot continue like this if there is no agreement. We may take a role.’ Eighteen months later they are, slowly but surely, in many ways. In recent weeks the Sudan government has begun responding with predictable force—aerial bombardment, ground attack, arrests of family members. Alex has drawn attention to how the Arabs of Darfur feel abandoned by the international community, collectively demonized for the sins of the government and the Janjawiid. (Re-Visiting North Darfur’s Arabs, 29 November 2007). But there is a new problem today, and one that needs addressing urgently: how are the growing number of Arabs who have chosen to stand against the government to be protected as the government turns its guns on them, in their turn?
The Arab challenge is absolutely critical. Without Arab support, Khartoum could not prosecute its war in Darfur as it is. The regular army is poorly motivated, poorly trained and demoralized by a series of crushing defeats. Much of its officer class dislikes the enforced partnership with the Janjawiid and the abuses that have characterized it, for which the International Criminal Court is now pressing charges.
At the centre of the latest storm is a 31-year-old Arab called Anwar Ahmad Khater, the founder of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) that took up arms against the government last year and a member of the Mahamid tribe (Awlad Zeid section) from which most of Musa Hilal’s forces are drawn. At least 26 of his men were killed last week when government forces attacked one of his camps in the Jebel Kengo area north-east of Zalingei. Some escaped on donkeys after their cars were destroyed and were given refuge by local farmers who offered them water, not caring that they were Arabs. As an SRF militant said in reporting the attack: ‘You see how wonderful Darfur is, but for this mess of government policy and individuals spreading hatred.’
A number of Anwar’s relatives have been arrested, including several of his brothers, and children in the family have been interrogated about his whereabouts. A security officer told one of them: ‘We should have killed him when we had the chance. He is more dangerous to us than Abdel Wahid [Mohamed al Nur, the leader of the original Sudan Liberation Army] because he is working in our zone’. In other words, he is active among Arabs—seeking above all to neutralize them, to prevent the government using them for its own nefarious purposes.
Many Darfurians—including Abdel Wahid, who puts great emphasis on good relations with Arab tribes—believe that Anwar Khater is the person best-equipped to unite the Arabs of Darfur. He is educated (a computer engineer) and free of any suspicion of Janjawiidism (unlike the other Arab ‘rebel’ making news at the moment, Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo ‘Hemeti’). The few foreigners who have met him say he has enormous charisma. Most importantly, perhaps, Anwar Khater has cachet among the Mahamid: his father, Ahmad Khater, was an advisor to Hilal Abdalla, the late sheikh of the Mahamid who is as much revered among the Arabs of Darfur as his son, Musa Hilal, is controversial.
Offered a scholarship to the U.S. on completing his studies, but not permitted by the government to take it up, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur from Khartoum in 2004 and immediately began rallying Arabs against the government. He was detained by Security twice in 2004, once after distributing pamphlets in Zalingei denouncing the political and economic marginalization of Darfur. In 2005, he was detained for a month after a similar protest in Geneina. In 2006, as his influence grew, especially among young Arabs, he was detained by Musa Hilal and flown to Khartoum, where he was imprisoned for more than three months. Security chief Salah Gosh told him: ‘The UN [peacekeepers] will fight you as Arabs. If you do not join us you will never survive in Darfur. The international community’s war will be imposed on Darfur.’
Upon his release, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur once more and began to make contacts with internationals to explain the program of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front—a name recently hijacked by Hemeti, with whom Anwar Khater has refused to cooperate, saying ‘I can never put my hand in the hand of anyone accused of killing innocent people’. His main concern, he said at the time, was to combat the government’s efforts to isolate Darfur’s Arabs and make them voiceless. Since then, he has been working, quietly, to bring Arab dissidents from different tribes together in a single, united body. He has forged good relations with several SLA factions including that of Abdel Wahid.
The SRF’s rebellion is just one example of a new mood among the Arabs of Darfur. Another is the mutiny of Hemeti, whom U.S. officials consider one of the most abusive government-supported militia leaders of Darfur, responsible for much burning, killing and rape. When Hemeti mutinied in October, he cited the double betrayal of Darfur’s Arabs: broken promises to provide their nomadic communities with health and veterinary services, and schools and water, and unfulfilled commitments to pay militia salaries and give compensation for war dead. He said he took up arms to defend his tribe after thousands of camels were stolen and scores of his relatives were abducted by SLA Zaghawa rebels. That was then. Today the Zaghawa SLA leader, Minni Minawi, is Senior Assistant to President Omar Bashir—with power, on paper, over reforming Arab militias after becoming the only rebel leader to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006.
The significance of Hemeti’s revolt is very different to that of Anwar Khater’s. His record makes him a problematic figure, both for the international community and the rebel movements. But while Anwar Khatar has credibility as a young and educated Arab leader with clean hands, Hemeti has guns. The government gave Hemeti brand-new vehicles, Thuraya telephones, heavy weapons and, reportedly, millions of dollars as the price of participation in an offensive against the rebels after they tried to take the war to Kordofan three months ago. But Hemeti double-crossed them, withdrew with his forces to Jebel Marra, and announced his opposition to Khartoum. In response, the government unleashed its air force and ground forces against him.
Both Abdel Wahid’s SLA and Khalil Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement have signed non-aggression pacts with Hemeti and his militia. Abdel Wahid told me in Paris a month ago, ‘There is no UN force to stop the Janjawiid killing my people and I have no force to stop them, so I have to bring them on my side or neutralize them.’ Neutralization may be as far as he is wiling to go with Hemeti, but he wants Anwar Khater on his side. Anwar, for his part, does not rule out eventual unity, but not until political programmes are clarified and the SLA has put its chaotic house in order.
With only a few hundred armed men, the strategy of the SRF thus far has been to target those responsible for recruiting Arabs into the Janjawiid. ‘Arabs,’ Anwar Khater said last year, ‘do not access humanitarian aid because the international community considers that the Arabs are the perpetrators of all the crimes committed in Darfur. This is not true.’
The SRC believes that Khartoum plans a ‘comprehensive attack’ on its men in the coming days, ‘to finish Anwar during the holidays when UN staff will be on holiday’—and before the UNAMID force becomes operational. Anwar, they say, ‘can be the bridge between Arabs and the international community’ – if he survives.
* Julie Flint is independent journalist who led a Human Rights Watch trip to Sudan. Her report for Human Rights Watch, "Darfur Destroyed". She is the co-author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War."
(Sudan Tribune)
January 1, 2008 (LONDON) — Towards the end of the Abuja talks, an Arab intellectual sympathetic to the Darfur rebels remarked: ‘Ninety percent of the Arabs of Darfur are neutral so far. We cannot continue like this if there is no agreement. We may take a role.’ Eighteen months later they are, slowly but surely, in many ways. In recent weeks the Sudan government has begun responding with predictable force—aerial bombardment, ground attack, arrests of family members. Alex has drawn attention to how the Arabs of Darfur feel abandoned by the international community, collectively demonized for the sins of the government and the Janjawiid. (Re-Visiting North Darfur’s Arabs, 29 November 2007). But there is a new problem today, and one that needs addressing urgently: how are the growing number of Arabs who have chosen to stand against the government to be protected as the government turns its guns on them, in their turn?
The Arab challenge is absolutely critical. Without Arab support, Khartoum could not prosecute its war in Darfur as it is. The regular army is poorly motivated, poorly trained and demoralized by a series of crushing defeats. Much of its officer class dislikes the enforced partnership with the Janjawiid and the abuses that have characterized it, for which the International Criminal Court is now pressing charges.
At the centre of the latest storm is a 31-year-old Arab called Anwar Ahmad Khater, the founder of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) that took up arms against the government last year and a member of the Mahamid tribe (Awlad Zeid section) from which most of Musa Hilal’s forces are drawn. At least 26 of his men were killed last week when government forces attacked one of his camps in the Jebel Kengo area north-east of Zalingei. Some escaped on donkeys after their cars were destroyed and were given refuge by local farmers who offered them water, not caring that they were Arabs. As an SRF militant said in reporting the attack: ‘You see how wonderful Darfur is, but for this mess of government policy and individuals spreading hatred.’
A number of Anwar’s relatives have been arrested, including several of his brothers, and children in the family have been interrogated about his whereabouts. A security officer told one of them: ‘We should have killed him when we had the chance. He is more dangerous to us than Abdel Wahid [Mohamed al Nur, the leader of the original Sudan Liberation Army] because he is working in our zone’. In other words, he is active among Arabs—seeking above all to neutralize them, to prevent the government using them for its own nefarious purposes.
Many Darfurians—including Abdel Wahid, who puts great emphasis on good relations with Arab tribes—believe that Anwar Khater is the person best-equipped to unite the Arabs of Darfur. He is educated (a computer engineer) and free of any suspicion of Janjawiidism (unlike the other Arab ‘rebel’ making news at the moment, Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo ‘Hemeti’). The few foreigners who have met him say he has enormous charisma. Most importantly, perhaps, Anwar Khater has cachet among the Mahamid: his father, Ahmad Khater, was an advisor to Hilal Abdalla, the late sheikh of the Mahamid who is as much revered among the Arabs of Darfur as his son, Musa Hilal, is controversial.
Offered a scholarship to the U.S. on completing his studies, but not permitted by the government to take it up, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur from Khartoum in 2004 and immediately began rallying Arabs against the government. He was detained by Security twice in 2004, once after distributing pamphlets in Zalingei denouncing the political and economic marginalization of Darfur. In 2005, he was detained for a month after a similar protest in Geneina. In 2006, as his influence grew, especially among young Arabs, he was detained by Musa Hilal and flown to Khartoum, where he was imprisoned for more than three months. Security chief Salah Gosh told him: ‘The UN [peacekeepers] will fight you as Arabs. If you do not join us you will never survive in Darfur. The international community’s war will be imposed on Darfur.’
Upon his release, Anwar Khater returned to Darfur once more and began to make contacts with internationals to explain the program of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front—a name recently hijacked by Hemeti, with whom Anwar Khater has refused to cooperate, saying ‘I can never put my hand in the hand of anyone accused of killing innocent people’. His main concern, he said at the time, was to combat the government’s efforts to isolate Darfur’s Arabs and make them voiceless. Since then, he has been working, quietly, to bring Arab dissidents from different tribes together in a single, united body. He has forged good relations with several SLA factions including that of Abdel Wahid.
The SRF’s rebellion is just one example of a new mood among the Arabs of Darfur. Another is the mutiny of Hemeti, whom U.S. officials consider one of the most abusive government-supported militia leaders of Darfur, responsible for much burning, killing and rape. When Hemeti mutinied in October, he cited the double betrayal of Darfur’s Arabs: broken promises to provide their nomadic communities with health and veterinary services, and schools and water, and unfulfilled commitments to pay militia salaries and give compensation for war dead. He said he took up arms to defend his tribe after thousands of camels were stolen and scores of his relatives were abducted by SLA Zaghawa rebels. That was then. Today the Zaghawa SLA leader, Minni Minawi, is Senior Assistant to President Omar Bashir—with power, on paper, over reforming Arab militias after becoming the only rebel leader to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement in May 2006.
The significance of Hemeti’s revolt is very different to that of Anwar Khater’s. His record makes him a problematic figure, both for the international community and the rebel movements. But while Anwar Khatar has credibility as a young and educated Arab leader with clean hands, Hemeti has guns. The government gave Hemeti brand-new vehicles, Thuraya telephones, heavy weapons and, reportedly, millions of dollars as the price of participation in an offensive against the rebels after they tried to take the war to Kordofan three months ago. But Hemeti double-crossed them, withdrew with his forces to Jebel Marra, and announced his opposition to Khartoum. In response, the government unleashed its air force and ground forces against him.
Both Abdel Wahid’s SLA and Khalil Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement have signed non-aggression pacts with Hemeti and his militia. Abdel Wahid told me in Paris a month ago, ‘There is no UN force to stop the Janjawiid killing my people and I have no force to stop them, so I have to bring them on my side or neutralize them.’ Neutralization may be as far as he is wiling to go with Hemeti, but he wants Anwar Khater on his side. Anwar, for his part, does not rule out eventual unity, but not until political programmes are clarified and the SLA has put its chaotic house in order.
With only a few hundred armed men, the strategy of the SRF thus far has been to target those responsible for recruiting Arabs into the Janjawiid. ‘Arabs,’ Anwar Khater said last year, ‘do not access humanitarian aid because the international community considers that the Arabs are the perpetrators of all the crimes committed in Darfur. This is not true.’
The SRC believes that Khartoum plans a ‘comprehensive attack’ on its men in the coming days, ‘to finish Anwar during the holidays when UN staff will be on holiday’—and before the UNAMID force becomes operational. Anwar, they say, ‘can be the bridge between Arabs and the international community’ – if he survives.
* Julie Flint is independent journalist who led a Human Rights Watch trip to Sudan. Her report for Human Rights Watch, "Darfur Destroyed". She is the co-author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War."
(Sudan Tribune)
Bush says “frustrated” with UN, AU over Darfur force deployment
Saturday 5 January 2008.
By Wasil Ali
January 4, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — US President George Bush expressed frustration over the slow pace of deploying the UN-AU hybrid force to the war ravaged region of Darfur.
Bush speaks about the injustices present in the Darfur region of Sudan at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington April 18, 2007 (Reuters)
“I have been frustrated, frankly, with the pace of the United Nations and the AU to get troops in there” Bush told a group of Arab reporters at the White House today.
A joint African-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur on Monday and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
Bush stressed that the deployment of the hybrid force is crucial for enforcing security in Darfur.
“My concern is about the individual that’s out in the remote regions of Darfur, maybe going hungry, definitely worried about violence” he said.
He added that the peacekeeping force’s main task is to “help the folks who are living in these dispersed camps have a normal life”.
The US president also signaled impatience with the splintering of Darfur rebel groups saying that it is impeding the peace process.
“There has to be cohesion amongst the rebels and a genuine, real peace process where people sit down seriously — to seriously discuss a better way forward” Bush said.
Major Darfur rebel groups have boycotted the latest round of peace talks in Libya for different reasons including the demand of peacekeeping force deployment.
“The rebel groups cannot take advantage of — continue to take advantage of this notion that they can do what they want without being serious about the peace” he added.
Bush said that the sanctions imposed by the US were not directed at Khartoum only but also to the Darfur rebel leaders.
Last May Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.
“We have participated by sanctioning, to send the signal that we expect the government to participate seriously. And we’re also, by the way, as I told you, we sanctioned a rebel leader, trying to send the same message” he said.
The US president voiced support to the mission of Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, in trying to unite the rebel groups.
However Bush made no mention of Salim Ahmed Salim, AU envoy for Darfur who is working with Eliasson on the political track. The US president also did not praise the role of the AU as he normally does when speaking about Darfur in the media.
The omission may signal the US administration’s dissatisfaction with the African Union’s leadership.
Last September the US criticized the African Union and accused it of slowing the deployment of the hybrid force in response to statements by AU chairman.
African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has issued a warning at the time to Western nations saying that “financing is important, but it does not authorize’ intervention”.
But U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad responding to Konare’s statements said that UN members are picking the tab on the hybrid force which means that non-African troops must be included.
“The African Union secretariat needs to move” Khalilzad said.
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.
(Sudan Tribune)
By Wasil Ali
January 4, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — US President George Bush expressed frustration over the slow pace of deploying the UN-AU hybrid force to the war ravaged region of Darfur.
Bush speaks about the injustices present in the Darfur region of Sudan at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington April 18, 2007 (Reuters)
“I have been frustrated, frankly, with the pace of the United Nations and the AU to get troops in there” Bush told a group of Arab reporters at the White House today.
A joint African-United Nations force took over peacekeeping duties in Darfur on Monday and existing AU forces switched their green berets to the UN blue ones. The transfer of authority has been largely symbolic.
Sudan not signed off on the Status of Force (SAF) agreement that governs the work of the new force. It has refused to allow night flights — except for medical evacuation — or large U.N. cargo planes.
Additionally, the government has attempted to require the force to give it advance notice of all movements and to ensure that its military can scramble U.N. radio communications when it is conducting operations.
Sudan has also refused to allow non-African units in Darfur including Swedish, Thai and Nepalese troops.
Bush stressed that the deployment of the hybrid force is crucial for enforcing security in Darfur.
“My concern is about the individual that’s out in the remote regions of Darfur, maybe going hungry, definitely worried about violence” he said.
He added that the peacekeeping force’s main task is to “help the folks who are living in these dispersed camps have a normal life”.
The US president also signaled impatience with the splintering of Darfur rebel groups saying that it is impeding the peace process.
“There has to be cohesion amongst the rebels and a genuine, real peace process where people sit down seriously — to seriously discuss a better way forward” Bush said.
Major Darfur rebel groups have boycotted the latest round of peace talks in Libya for different reasons including the demand of peacekeeping force deployment.
“The rebel groups cannot take advantage of — continue to take advantage of this notion that they can do what they want without being serious about the peace” he added.
Bush said that the sanctions imposed by the US were not directed at Khartoum only but also to the Darfur rebel leaders.
Last May Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.
“We have participated by sanctioning, to send the signal that we expect the government to participate seriously. And we’re also, by the way, as I told you, we sanctioned a rebel leader, trying to send the same message” he said.
The US president voiced support to the mission of Jan Eliasson, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Darfur, in trying to unite the rebel groups.
However Bush made no mention of Salim Ahmed Salim, AU envoy for Darfur who is working with Eliasson on the political track. The US president also did not praise the role of the AU as he normally does when speaking about Darfur in the media.
The omission may signal the US administration’s dissatisfaction with the African Union’s leadership.
Last September the US criticized the African Union and accused it of slowing the deployment of the hybrid force in response to statements by AU chairman.
African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare has issued a warning at the time to Western nations saying that “financing is important, but it does not authorize’ intervention”.
But U.S. Ambassador at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad responding to Konare’s statements said that UN members are picking the tab on the hybrid force which means that non-African troops must be included.
“The African Union secretariat needs to move” Khalilzad said.
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in the conflict, which Washington calls genocide, a term European governments are reluctant to use. The Sudan government says 9,000 people have been killed.
(Sudan Tribune)
Jan. 9 set for northern troops to quit South Sudan
Saturday 5 January 2008.
January 4, 2008 (JUBA) — Sudanese officials have set a Jan. 9 deadline for northern armed forces to quit the semi-autonomous south after they missed a third redeployment deadline on Monday, southern official Elias Waya said.
A Sudanese soldier is seen in Juba, southern Sudan, August 6, 2005 (Reuters)
Sudan’s northern forces missed the Dec. 31 deadline following on-off fighting last month between former southern rebels and northern militia forces in the country’s north-south boundary area and months of political wrangling.
"Now, it is before January 9," Waya, both a major general in the former rebel southern army and a member of a joint north-south defence body, said on Friday.
"All the time they agree, but when the time comes they will give excuses."
The redeployment is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended over two decades of north-south Sudanese civil war in which 2 million people died and 4 million were displaced in a conflict fought over ideology and ethnicity, and fuelled by oil.
The former southern rebel movement that now controls the south Sudan government pulled its ministers out of a national coalition government in October, saying Khartoum was failing to implement measures of the 2005 deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war.
One major complaint was the failure of northern troops to quit the south by an initial July 9 redeployment date. Crisis talks between the two sides first set a new deadline for Dec. 15. Further talks moved the date to the end of 2007.
Southern officials accuse northern forces of remaining in southern oil areas to retain control of Sudan’s main export. Khartoum has said it has only 3,600 troops in the south, while south Sudan President Salva Kiir has put the figure at 17,000.
A Sudanese army spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Waya told Reuters on Thursday that northern army officials had earlier said transport problems caused the missed deadline but were now citing the lack of special integrated units of northern and southern soldiers in the oil areas.
Under the peace deal, the joint units are to patrol the area’s that produce Sudan’s vital 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
"(Their) transport and equipment are really very weak," Waya said, adding that was why the units had not reached the oil areas earlier.
He said the U.N. mission in Sudan has agreed to airlift three battalions from three parts of the south into oil areas, which would leave some 10,000 joint units concentrated in the south’s two main oil states.
"These are enough. There is no security threat in the area," Waya said, adding that the integrated soldiers are only responsible for "outer circle" security, with state police and security guarding actual machinery and wells.
Fighting between northern militias and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army on the border killed dozens of people in late December, although the situation has since calmed.
(Reuters)
January 4, 2008 (JUBA) — Sudanese officials have set a Jan. 9 deadline for northern armed forces to quit the semi-autonomous south after they missed a third redeployment deadline on Monday, southern official Elias Waya said.
A Sudanese soldier is seen in Juba, southern Sudan, August 6, 2005 (Reuters)
Sudan’s northern forces missed the Dec. 31 deadline following on-off fighting last month between former southern rebels and northern militia forces in the country’s north-south boundary area and months of political wrangling.
"Now, it is before January 9," Waya, both a major general in the former rebel southern army and a member of a joint north-south defence body, said on Friday.
"All the time they agree, but when the time comes they will give excuses."
The redeployment is part of a 2005 peace agreement that ended over two decades of north-south Sudanese civil war in which 2 million people died and 4 million were displaced in a conflict fought over ideology and ethnicity, and fuelled by oil.
The former southern rebel movement that now controls the south Sudan government pulled its ministers out of a national coalition government in October, saying Khartoum was failing to implement measures of the 2005 deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war.
One major complaint was the failure of northern troops to quit the south by an initial July 9 redeployment date. Crisis talks between the two sides first set a new deadline for Dec. 15. Further talks moved the date to the end of 2007.
Southern officials accuse northern forces of remaining in southern oil areas to retain control of Sudan’s main export. Khartoum has said it has only 3,600 troops in the south, while south Sudan President Salva Kiir has put the figure at 17,000.
A Sudanese army spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Waya told Reuters on Thursday that northern army officials had earlier said transport problems caused the missed deadline but were now citing the lack of special integrated units of northern and southern soldiers in the oil areas.
Under the peace deal, the joint units are to patrol the area’s that produce Sudan’s vital 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
"(Their) transport and equipment are really very weak," Waya said, adding that was why the units had not reached the oil areas earlier.
He said the U.N. mission in Sudan has agreed to airlift three battalions from three parts of the south into oil areas, which would leave some 10,000 joint units concentrated in the south’s two main oil states.
"These are enough. There is no security threat in the area," Waya said, adding that the integrated soldiers are only responsible for "outer circle" security, with state police and security guarding actual machinery and wells.
Fighting between northern militias and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army on the border killed dozens of people in late December, although the situation has since calmed.
(Reuters)
Friday, November 2, 2007
Sudan arrests 36 displaced following Darfur forced relocation - Amnesty
Friday 2 November 2007.
November 1, 2007 (LONDON) — Sudan Security forces detained 36 people from Otash Camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in South Darfur on the evening of 29 October. In a press statement issued today, Amnesty International said they are in danger of being tortured in detention.
Displaced Sudanese women walk from Kalma camp near Nyala, in South Darfur in Sudan, September 29, 2004. (Reuters)
Following fighting between different ethnic groups in Kalma camp, on 18 October a large number of IDPs fled Kalma Camp, which is near Nyala. Most of those that fled the fighting went to Otash Camp, which is24km from Kalma Camp.
During the afternoon of 29 October police and soldiers went into Otash Camp to remove the recent arrivals and forcibly relocate them to a village named Amakisara, 23km from Nyala.
Members of the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), including military personnel, observers and AMIS police, went to the camp, but were ordered to leave by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) colonel conducting the operation.
They saw the camp residents fleeing while tents were destroyed and property was carried away in trucks. According to the UN, IDPs were being threatened by soldiers and police wielding sticks and rubber hoses.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement spokesperson, Ahmed Hussein Adam, who condemned the forced relocation, said Sudanese authorities have taken the children of these displaced and demanded the parents to follow them to Amakisara .
While the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdelwahid al-Nur, condemned this “heinous and abject crime” committed against Darfur innocent people. He urged the UN Security Council to sanction Sudan this forced relocation which is clear violation of the international law.
According to UN figures 2.2 million people in Darfur are now gathered in IDP camps. They were driven out of their homes when, in response to attacks by rebel groups, the government armed and supported local militias, known as the Janjawid, as a proxy force.
The government and the Janjawid attempted to suppress the insurgency by deliberately targeting civilians of the same ethnicity as the rebel groups. About 95,000 people have been killed, and more than 200,000 have died over the past four years as a result of conflict-related hunger or disease.
Vast areas of Darfur have been emptied of farmers, and hundreds of villages have been razed to the ground. The UN has issued a statement expressing alarm at the violence against IDPs and the attempted forcible relocations in Otash Camp.
IDPs feel safer in the camps and have consistently resisted government pressure to move out of them into areas which are still dominated by armed members of the Janjawid militias who killed and displaced them. Forcible relocation is prohibited by international standards.
(ST)
November 1, 2007 (LONDON) — Sudan Security forces detained 36 people from Otash Camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in South Darfur on the evening of 29 October. In a press statement issued today, Amnesty International said they are in danger of being tortured in detention.
Displaced Sudanese women walk from Kalma camp near Nyala, in South Darfur in Sudan, September 29, 2004. (Reuters)
Following fighting between different ethnic groups in Kalma camp, on 18 October a large number of IDPs fled Kalma Camp, which is near Nyala. Most of those that fled the fighting went to Otash Camp, which is24km from Kalma Camp.
During the afternoon of 29 October police and soldiers went into Otash Camp to remove the recent arrivals and forcibly relocate them to a village named Amakisara, 23km from Nyala.
Members of the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), including military personnel, observers and AMIS police, went to the camp, but were ordered to leave by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) colonel conducting the operation.
They saw the camp residents fleeing while tents were destroyed and property was carried away in trucks. According to the UN, IDPs were being threatened by soldiers and police wielding sticks and rubber hoses.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement spokesperson, Ahmed Hussein Adam, who condemned the forced relocation, said Sudanese authorities have taken the children of these displaced and demanded the parents to follow them to Amakisara .
While the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdelwahid al-Nur, condemned this “heinous and abject crime” committed against Darfur innocent people. He urged the UN Security Council to sanction Sudan this forced relocation which is clear violation of the international law.
According to UN figures 2.2 million people in Darfur are now gathered in IDP camps. They were driven out of their homes when, in response to attacks by rebel groups, the government armed and supported local militias, known as the Janjawid, as a proxy force.
The government and the Janjawid attempted to suppress the insurgency by deliberately targeting civilians of the same ethnicity as the rebel groups. About 95,000 people have been killed, and more than 200,000 have died over the past four years as a result of conflict-related hunger or disease.
Vast areas of Darfur have been emptied of farmers, and hundreds of villages have been razed to the ground. The UN has issued a statement expressing alarm at the violence against IDPs and the attempted forcible relocations in Otash Camp.
IDPs feel safer in the camps and have consistently resisted government pressure to move out of them into areas which are still dominated by armed members of the Janjawid militias who killed and displaced them. Forcible relocation is prohibited by international standards.
(ST)
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Darfur camp eviction 'fabricated'
Sudanese diplomats have dismissed as "fabrications", reports that hundreds of people were forcibly evicted from a camp near Nyala in southern Darfur.
Sudan's UN envoy, Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem Mohamed, told the BBC that eyewitness accounts were "irrelevant, unfortunate and unconfirmed".
An un-named UN official on Sunday saw the forced relocation of refugees at gunpoint from Otash camp to Amakassara.
The UN says this "dangerous precedent" could jeopardise Darfur peace talks.
Some 200,000 people are estimated to have died and more than two million displaced during the four-year war.
UN emergency relief coordinator Sir John Holmes said a UN official witnessed Sudanese security forces with sticks and rubber hoses coercing hundreds of refugees, including women and children, to leave Otash refugee camp on the outskirts of Nyala.
Other witnesses told the BBC they saw 10 vehicles with heavy machine guns surrounding people, while eight trucks were loaded with their belongings.
The refugees have been moved into an area where the UN says it is known that the Janjaweed militia operate.
"We are making a fuss because... this is a very dangerous precedent in an area where there are very many thousands of people in camps, where there are security problems," Sir John told the BBC.
He said the UN wanted to send a message to Khartoum that this was not acceptable behaviour and must not happen again.
'No go areas'
Sudanese diplomats contacted by the BBC rejected the reports.
Mr Abdelmahmood said the allegations were "more than fabrications" aimed at "distracting attention from the Sudanese government's announcement of a unilateral ceasefire to accompany the peace talks".
Asked if he was suggesting the UN emergency relief coordinator would make up the reports, Mr Abdelmahmood said: "We do not want to question his credentials but the way he... the timing leaves a lot to be desired."
And in London, Ambassador Khalid al Mubarak said it was for the Sudanese government to make an official statement "after they make their own investigations on the ground".
He said there were armed men in some of the refugee camps which have become "no go areas" for the authorities and aid workers alike.
The governor of South Darfur told the UN it is his intention to close the camps around Nyala, which are home to as many as 90,000 people.
Otash camp alone has an estimated 60,000 refugees, swollen by numbers of people fleeing violence at the Kalma camp, Darfur's largest, a week ago.
Darfur peace talks
This renewed tension comes as international mediators struggle to save peace talks which opened at the weekend in the Libyan town of Sirte with none of the key rebel groups present.
Organisers are striving to avoid defeatism, and are sending African Union and UN envoys to meet absent rebel groups to try to persuade them to get on board.
Leaders of the two main rebel forces - the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement headed by Abdul Wahid el Nur - have called for the talks to be cancelled for the time being.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7068544.stm
Published: 2007/10/30 09:40:58 GMT
Sudan's UN envoy, Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem Mohamed, told the BBC that eyewitness accounts were "irrelevant, unfortunate and unconfirmed".
An un-named UN official on Sunday saw the forced relocation of refugees at gunpoint from Otash camp to Amakassara.
The UN says this "dangerous precedent" could jeopardise Darfur peace talks.
Some 200,000 people are estimated to have died and more than two million displaced during the four-year war.
UN emergency relief coordinator Sir John Holmes said a UN official witnessed Sudanese security forces with sticks and rubber hoses coercing hundreds of refugees, including women and children, to leave Otash refugee camp on the outskirts of Nyala.
Other witnesses told the BBC they saw 10 vehicles with heavy machine guns surrounding people, while eight trucks were loaded with their belongings.
The refugees have been moved into an area where the UN says it is known that the Janjaweed militia operate.
"We are making a fuss because... this is a very dangerous precedent in an area where there are very many thousands of people in camps, where there are security problems," Sir John told the BBC.
He said the UN wanted to send a message to Khartoum that this was not acceptable behaviour and must not happen again.
'No go areas'
Sudanese diplomats contacted by the BBC rejected the reports.
Mr Abdelmahmood said the allegations were "more than fabrications" aimed at "distracting attention from the Sudanese government's announcement of a unilateral ceasefire to accompany the peace talks".
Asked if he was suggesting the UN emergency relief coordinator would make up the reports, Mr Abdelmahmood said: "We do not want to question his credentials but the way he... the timing leaves a lot to be desired."
And in London, Ambassador Khalid al Mubarak said it was for the Sudanese government to make an official statement "after they make their own investigations on the ground".
He said there were armed men in some of the refugee camps which have become "no go areas" for the authorities and aid workers alike.
The governor of South Darfur told the UN it is his intention to close the camps around Nyala, which are home to as many as 90,000 people.
Otash camp alone has an estimated 60,000 refugees, swollen by numbers of people fleeing violence at the Kalma camp, Darfur's largest, a week ago.
Darfur peace talks
This renewed tension comes as international mediators struggle to save peace talks which opened at the weekend in the Libyan town of Sirte with none of the key rebel groups present.
Organisers are striving to avoid defeatism, and are sending African Union and UN envoys to meet absent rebel groups to try to persuade them to get on board.
Leaders of the two main rebel forces - the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement headed by Abdul Wahid el Nur - have called for the talks to be cancelled for the time being.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7068544.stm
Published: 2007/10/30 09:40:58 GMT
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Congo rebel fighters fail to turn in as promised
By Joe Bavier
KINSHASA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A renegade Congolese general said on Wednesday he would disband some of his rebel soldiers to help bring peace to an eastern province, but U.N. officials said there was no sign of his fighters turning themselves in.
General Laurent Nkunda had said he would send more than 500 of his Tutsi soldiers on Wednesday to a specially prepared camp in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, for them to be integrated into the national army.
His announcement appeared to signal that he was willing to participate in the demobilisation process demanded by President Joseph Kabila, who has given the go ahead for an army offensive to forcibly disarm Nkunda's men if they fail to disband.
But as night fell over North Kivu, where Nkunda has fought battles against the army since August when his soldiers abandoned a January peace deal, United Nations officials said there was no sign of Nkunda's fighters coming in from the bush.
"It's getting dark here and unfortunately no combatants have come in," Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, a spokeswoman in North Kivu for the U.N. mission in Congo (MONUC), told Reuters.
"We're starting to worry that General Nkunda will not live up to the promise he made in a public statement to international media that he would send more than 500 of his men to Kirolirwe integration centre," she added.
There was no immediate word from Nkunda as to why he had failed to send his men for integration as he had promised.
Earlier, the insurgent general, who has led a rebellion since 2004 in defence of the Tutsi community in Congo, said he was in contact with MONUC. He said U.N. peacekeepers had prepared the logistics to receive his men.
"I'm doing this to show the international community that we Congolese want peace ... because civilians are continuing to die without reason," Nkunda said, referring to civilian casualties in recent fighting.
"SEEING IS BELIEVING"
Diplomats said Nkunda had previously made similar public promises to disband his men without following through.
"We'll believe it when we see it. We've seen these promises before," one Western diplomat in Kinshasa said. Experts estimate Nkunda's total forces may number at least 4,000.
MONUC has called on Nkunda's men to make the short trip out of the bush and report to special camps so they can be integrated into the national army as part of a nationwide peace process that followed the country's 1998-2003 war.
Kabila, who has vowed to pacify all of his vast, mineral-rich country since winning elections in the former Belgian colony last year, said last week he had given a "green light" for the armed forces to move against Nkunda.
But the president, who is currently visiting the United States, declined to say when the offensive would start.
Nkunda says he is defending Congo's Tutsi ethnic community against attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels he says are supported by Kabila's army. The Congolese leader denies such support and says he also plans to disarm the Hutu rebels, who are accused of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide killings of Tutsis.
U.N. relief agencies fear an all-out army offensive will sharply worsen the humanitarian situation in North Kivu, where 370,000 people have fled fighting this year. (Additional reporting by Themistocle Hakizimana in Kigali)
AlertNet news
KINSHASA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A renegade Congolese general said on Wednesday he would disband some of his rebel soldiers to help bring peace to an eastern province, but U.N. officials said there was no sign of his fighters turning themselves in.
General Laurent Nkunda had said he would send more than 500 of his Tutsi soldiers on Wednesday to a specially prepared camp in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, for them to be integrated into the national army.
His announcement appeared to signal that he was willing to participate in the demobilisation process demanded by President Joseph Kabila, who has given the go ahead for an army offensive to forcibly disarm Nkunda's men if they fail to disband.
But as night fell over North Kivu, where Nkunda has fought battles against the army since August when his soldiers abandoned a January peace deal, United Nations officials said there was no sign of Nkunda's fighters coming in from the bush.
"It's getting dark here and unfortunately no combatants have come in," Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, a spokeswoman in North Kivu for the U.N. mission in Congo (MONUC), told Reuters.
"We're starting to worry that General Nkunda will not live up to the promise he made in a public statement to international media that he would send more than 500 of his men to Kirolirwe integration centre," she added.
There was no immediate word from Nkunda as to why he had failed to send his men for integration as he had promised.
Earlier, the insurgent general, who has led a rebellion since 2004 in defence of the Tutsi community in Congo, said he was in contact with MONUC. He said U.N. peacekeepers had prepared the logistics to receive his men.
"I'm doing this to show the international community that we Congolese want peace ... because civilians are continuing to die without reason," Nkunda said, referring to civilian casualties in recent fighting.
"SEEING IS BELIEVING"
Diplomats said Nkunda had previously made similar public promises to disband his men without following through.
"We'll believe it when we see it. We've seen these promises before," one Western diplomat in Kinshasa said. Experts estimate Nkunda's total forces may number at least 4,000.
MONUC has called on Nkunda's men to make the short trip out of the bush and report to special camps so they can be integrated into the national army as part of a nationwide peace process that followed the country's 1998-2003 war.
Kabila, who has vowed to pacify all of his vast, mineral-rich country since winning elections in the former Belgian colony last year, said last week he had given a "green light" for the armed forces to move against Nkunda.
But the president, who is currently visiting the United States, declined to say when the offensive would start.
Nkunda says he is defending Congo's Tutsi ethnic community against attacks by Rwandan Hutu rebels he says are supported by Kabila's army. The Congolese leader denies such support and says he also plans to disarm the Hutu rebels, who are accused of involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide killings of Tutsis.
U.N. relief agencies fear an all-out army offensive will sharply worsen the humanitarian situation in North Kivu, where 370,000 people have fled fighting this year. (Additional reporting by Themistocle Hakizimana in Kigali)
AlertNet news
Six Darfur rebel factions to boycott peace talks
October 23, 2007 (JUBA, Sudan) — A prominent Darfur rebel figure and five other smaller factions will not attend peace talks due to start this weekend in Libya, leaders said on Tuesday, casting doubt on prospects for a settlement.
Ahmed Abdelshafi
Ahmed Abdel Shafi told reporters at a Darfur rebel meeting in south Sudan’s capital Juba that African Union and United Nations mediators had not heeded rebel requests for a delay to allow them to form a united position and agree on a delegation.
"I was really shocked when people here are talking about unity and the United Nations started distributing invitations," he said.
"It’s ... a matter of sabotaging the process of unity," he said, adding unity talks were going well with more factions joining but more time was needed to complete negotiations.
Without all rebel groups present at the talks which begin in Sirte on Saturday, hopes for a ceasefire look slim.
Mediators had hoped as many rebels as possible would go to negotiate a comprehensive ceasefire in Darfur as a first step towards resolving the conflict.
Since a peace deal signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions last year, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen groups.
Around 70 rebel delegates are in Juba for talks intended to produce a unified delegation. Lounging under umbrellas in the gardens of the Home And Away cafe to the plangent tones of U.S. Country & Western music, some wore pristine suits while others sported camouflage mesh head wraps and khaki uniforms.
Esam al-Hajj, another SLM rebel figure in Juba, said five other factions from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) would also not be going to the talks.
"Six factions ... and field commanders ... have agreed not to participate in the current negotiations," he said.
Added to SLM founder and popular leader Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur’s earlier refusal to attend the Libya talks, this would mean no rebels representing Darfur’s largest tribe, the Fur, will be negotiating with Khartoum in Sirte.
International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in 4-1/2 years of violence, but Khartoum puts the death toll at 9,000.
Abdel Shafi also said African Union and United Nations mediators had taken key decisions without consulting the rebels. They objected to the choice of Libya, a country which has been directly involved in the conflict, as the venue for the talks.
"We have a lot of reservations actually about the mediation," he said. On Libya, he said: "The people of Darfur feel ... that the neutrality is not there."
He said it could take at least a month before the rebels were ready to attend peace talks.
Hajj said another worry was the withdrawal this month of the former southern Sudanese rebels, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), from the national coalition government.
"The government at the moment is not the legal government," he said.
The SPLM has a 28 percent share of government but suspended its ministers, saying the dominant northern National Congress Party was stalling on the 2005 north-south peace deal.
The standoff threatens to derail that peace deal and could also hinder the Darfur talks in Libya.
(Reuters)
Ahmed Abdelshafi
Ahmed Abdel Shafi told reporters at a Darfur rebel meeting in south Sudan’s capital Juba that African Union and United Nations mediators had not heeded rebel requests for a delay to allow them to form a united position and agree on a delegation.
"I was really shocked when people here are talking about unity and the United Nations started distributing invitations," he said.
"It’s ... a matter of sabotaging the process of unity," he said, adding unity talks were going well with more factions joining but more time was needed to complete negotiations.
Without all rebel groups present at the talks which begin in Sirte on Saturday, hopes for a ceasefire look slim.
Mediators had hoped as many rebels as possible would go to negotiate a comprehensive ceasefire in Darfur as a first step towards resolving the conflict.
Since a peace deal signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions last year, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen groups.
Around 70 rebel delegates are in Juba for talks intended to produce a unified delegation. Lounging under umbrellas in the gardens of the Home And Away cafe to the plangent tones of U.S. Country & Western music, some wore pristine suits while others sported camouflage mesh head wraps and khaki uniforms.
Esam al-Hajj, another SLM rebel figure in Juba, said five other factions from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) would also not be going to the talks.
"Six factions ... and field commanders ... have agreed not to participate in the current negotiations," he said.
Added to SLM founder and popular leader Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur’s earlier refusal to attend the Libya talks, this would mean no rebels representing Darfur’s largest tribe, the Fur, will be negotiating with Khartoum in Sirte.
International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in 4-1/2 years of violence, but Khartoum puts the death toll at 9,000.
Abdel Shafi also said African Union and United Nations mediators had taken key decisions without consulting the rebels. They objected to the choice of Libya, a country which has been directly involved in the conflict, as the venue for the talks.
"We have a lot of reservations actually about the mediation," he said. On Libya, he said: "The people of Darfur feel ... that the neutrality is not there."
He said it could take at least a month before the rebels were ready to attend peace talks.
Hajj said another worry was the withdrawal this month of the former southern Sudanese rebels, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), from the national coalition government.
"The government at the moment is not the legal government," he said.
The SPLM has a 28 percent share of government but suspended its ministers, saying the dominant northern National Congress Party was stalling on the 2005 north-south peace deal.
The standoff threatens to derail that peace deal and could also hinder the Darfur talks in Libya.
(Reuters)
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Darfur force brings hope, new threats to aid effort
October 18, 2007 (LONDON) — Aid agencies working in Sudan’s Darfur hope incoming United Nations and African Union peacekeepers will help protect them, but there are also fears they could spark new violence against unarmed relief staff.
The 26,000-person hybrid force is due to arrive in Darfur in the coming months against a backdrop of escalating violence targeting the world’s largest humanitarian relief operation.
Gunman killed three U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) drivers in the last week, while agency compounds have been raided, staff abducted and equipment stolen.
The new peacekeepers — mainly African infantry with a handful of troops from other nations — will replace a much smaller African Union force that has largely failed to halt violence in a region the size of France.
Aid agencies — some of whom have lobbied for years for U.N. peacekeepers — say their situation now is so bad that they have to withdraw from some areas and cut back operations. Some reports suggest malnutrition rates are rising as a result.
"The way it is now for humanitarian agencies cannot continue," former U.N. undersecretary general Jan Egeland, one of the strongest advocates for the force, told Reuters last month.
"When the humanitarians or the refugees themselves say they are threatened, the force has to deploy protectively and defend. And fight, if necessary."
International experts say some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in Darfur since 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government, which in turn mobilised predominantly Arab militias to squelch the revolt.
Khartoum, which long resisted demands for a U.N. force, says only 9,000 are dead and the crisis has been exaggerated.
While many aid workers accuse the government of trying to frustrate their work, they blame most attacks on rebel groups and bandits intent on stealing equipment and vehicles, a practice experts say has become almost an industry in Darfur.
Aid groups hope more peacekeepers might reduce that risk. But at the same time, if the larger force takes more aggressive action than its AU predecessor it may make enemies — either militia or rebels — who may hit aid workers as a soft target.
KEEPING SEPARATE
"Of course it is possible and you can expect anything," said Francois Grignon, Africa project director for the International Crisis Group. "It is a risk with all peacekeeping operations. They will have to co-operate in terms of security."
He said the new force risked simply being too weak to change the situation on the ground, particularly if peace talks in Libya later this month failed to produce a concrete peace deal.
Former U.N. aid chief Egeland said there had been incidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere in West Africa where aid workers had been attacked or compounds burnt in retaliation for action by peacekeepers.
"We have been discussing that risk for years," he said. "Generally, it has been exaggerated. ... In the short term it may decrease security but in the long-term hopefully it will help."
Experts say it is important the aid effort maintains its distance from the peacekeepers if it is to maintain any impression of neutrality and work with all sides.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Western and U.N. aid agencies sent in large missions. Later that year, a truck bomb attack on the U.N. compound killed 22. Other attacks, kidnappings and killings forced most aid groups out.
"I think our mistake our was to send in so many people so fast on the back of an invasion force who looked just like us," Egeland said. "That is one of the reasons it is so important that the force in Darfur looks and feels African."
A much better equipped European Union force will be deployed across the border in neighbouring Chad and Central African Republic, but will not be authorised to cross into Darfur.
Subject to eventual Sudanese approval, there will be a small Western component to the Darfur force, primarily a battalion of 400 Norwegian and Swedish army engineers.
Their main remit will be building camps and bases for the main force. Their commander said they could help with sanitation and construction in refugee camps but would not do so unless asked by the main aid effort for fear of blurring the lines.
" We can’t just walk in and take over their missions," said Lieutenant Colonel Anstein Aasen in Oslo. "They have to to ask us and not the other way around."
(Reuters)
The 26,000-person hybrid force is due to arrive in Darfur in the coming months against a backdrop of escalating violence targeting the world’s largest humanitarian relief operation.
Gunman killed three U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) drivers in the last week, while agency compounds have been raided, staff abducted and equipment stolen.
The new peacekeepers — mainly African infantry with a handful of troops from other nations — will replace a much smaller African Union force that has largely failed to halt violence in a region the size of France.
Aid agencies — some of whom have lobbied for years for U.N. peacekeepers — say their situation now is so bad that they have to withdraw from some areas and cut back operations. Some reports suggest malnutrition rates are rising as a result.
"The way it is now for humanitarian agencies cannot continue," former U.N. undersecretary general Jan Egeland, one of the strongest advocates for the force, told Reuters last month.
"When the humanitarians or the refugees themselves say they are threatened, the force has to deploy protectively and defend. And fight, if necessary."
International experts say some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in Darfur since 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government, which in turn mobilised predominantly Arab militias to squelch the revolt.
Khartoum, which long resisted demands for a U.N. force, says only 9,000 are dead and the crisis has been exaggerated.
While many aid workers accuse the government of trying to frustrate their work, they blame most attacks on rebel groups and bandits intent on stealing equipment and vehicles, a practice experts say has become almost an industry in Darfur.
Aid groups hope more peacekeepers might reduce that risk. But at the same time, if the larger force takes more aggressive action than its AU predecessor it may make enemies — either militia or rebels — who may hit aid workers as a soft target.
KEEPING SEPARATE
"Of course it is possible and you can expect anything," said Francois Grignon, Africa project director for the International Crisis Group. "It is a risk with all peacekeeping operations. They will have to co-operate in terms of security."
He said the new force risked simply being too weak to change the situation on the ground, particularly if peace talks in Libya later this month failed to produce a concrete peace deal.
Former U.N. aid chief Egeland said there had been incidents in the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere in West Africa where aid workers had been attacked or compounds burnt in retaliation for action by peacekeepers.
"We have been discussing that risk for years," he said. "Generally, it has been exaggerated. ... In the short term it may decrease security but in the long-term hopefully it will help."
Experts say it is important the aid effort maintains its distance from the peacekeepers if it is to maintain any impression of neutrality and work with all sides.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Western and U.N. aid agencies sent in large missions. Later that year, a truck bomb attack on the U.N. compound killed 22. Other attacks, kidnappings and killings forced most aid groups out.
"I think our mistake our was to send in so many people so fast on the back of an invasion force who looked just like us," Egeland said. "That is one of the reasons it is so important that the force in Darfur looks and feels African."
A much better equipped European Union force will be deployed across the border in neighbouring Chad and Central African Republic, but will not be authorised to cross into Darfur.
Subject to eventual Sudanese approval, there will be a small Western component to the Darfur force, primarily a battalion of 400 Norwegian and Swedish army engineers.
Their main remit will be building camps and bases for the main force. Their commander said they could help with sanitation and construction in refugee camps but would not do so unless asked by the main aid effort for fear of blurring the lines.
" We can’t just walk in and take over their missions," said Lieutenant Colonel Anstein Aasen in Oslo. "They have to to ask us and not the other way around."
(Reuters)
Armed groups carry out daily attack on Darfur Kalama displaced
Friday 19 October 2007.
October 18, 2007 (NYALA) — Khartoum backed armed groups carry out daily attacks inside Darfur biggest camp in order to spread violence and force internally displaced persons to evacuate the camps, reports received from South Darfur say.
A Sudanese woman refugee arriving from Labado protects herself from the wind at Kalma Camp, near Nyala in Sudan’s South Darfur region 09 January 2005. (AFP).
Kalma camp is the most volatile one, but also the biggest IDPs camps. It is seen as supporting the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement founder and chairman Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur, who refuse to take part in the ongoing peace process demanding security for Darfur civilians before talks.
Since two days armed groups enter to the camp of Kalma in South Darfur state and attack habitants of the camp. Armed militia elements killed on Wednesday a displaced called Mahmoud Ishac, Sudan Tribune has learnt.
Asked by telephone, al-Nur confirmed the reports. He further accused Sudanese government of organizing regular attacks against civilians. "Civilians fear attacks and they are terrorized" he said.
The rebel leader urged the international community to accelerate the deployment of the 26, 000 peacekeepers in the region. He also urged pressures on the Sudanese government to stop the killing of Darfur civilian.
Up to last year, the government backed janjaweed militia attacked the IDPs particularly women who go out the camp to collect wood. The militia were always present out side the camps.
Sudanese forces surrounded and attacked Darfur’s most volatile camp on Tuesday August 21 to flush out rebels they say are behind attacks on two police posts.
International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003.
Khartoum agreed to a 26,000-strong joint U.N.-AU force which will absorb the AU mission and try to stop violence which has hampered the world’s largest aid operation in Darfur. Some 500,000 people are out of reach of relief workers.
(ST)
October 18, 2007 (NYALA) — Khartoum backed armed groups carry out daily attacks inside Darfur biggest camp in order to spread violence and force internally displaced persons to evacuate the camps, reports received from South Darfur say.
A Sudanese woman refugee arriving from Labado protects herself from the wind at Kalma Camp, near Nyala in Sudan’s South Darfur region 09 January 2005. (AFP).
Kalma camp is the most volatile one, but also the biggest IDPs camps. It is seen as supporting the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement founder and chairman Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur, who refuse to take part in the ongoing peace process demanding security for Darfur civilians before talks.
Since two days armed groups enter to the camp of Kalma in South Darfur state and attack habitants of the camp. Armed militia elements killed on Wednesday a displaced called Mahmoud Ishac, Sudan Tribune has learnt.
Asked by telephone, al-Nur confirmed the reports. He further accused Sudanese government of organizing regular attacks against civilians. "Civilians fear attacks and they are terrorized" he said.
The rebel leader urged the international community to accelerate the deployment of the 26, 000 peacekeepers in the region. He also urged pressures on the Sudanese government to stop the killing of Darfur civilian.
Up to last year, the government backed janjaweed militia attacked the IDPs particularly women who go out the camp to collect wood. The militia were always present out side the camps.
Sudanese forces surrounded and attacked Darfur’s most volatile camp on Tuesday August 21 to flush out rebels they say are behind attacks on two police posts.
International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003.
Khartoum agreed to a 26,000-strong joint U.N.-AU force which will absorb the AU mission and try to stop violence which has hampered the world’s largest aid operation in Darfur. Some 500,000 people are out of reach of relief workers.
(ST)
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Sudan rivals try to resolve split
South Sudan's leader Salva Kiir is travelling to meet the president in an effort to resolve a crisis that has threatened to tear the country apart.
Mr Kiir's ex-rebel group withdrew its ministers from government last week saying elements of a 2005 north-south peace pact were being ignored.
President Omar al-Bashir agreed in part to a request for a cabinet reshuffle.
But border demarcations and redeploying northern troops from the south are some of the things yet to be implemented.
The BBC's Amber Henshaw in the capital, Khartoum, says tensions have been brewing for months between the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the governing National Congress Party.
The two signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) two years ago that ended the 21-year civil war.
Under the CPA, the SPLM controls the southern regional government and participates in the national government in Khartoum.
But the enemies in war have struggled to become partners in peace, our reporter says.
Deadline
Mr Kiir - who is also the country's national vice-president - is travelling to Khartoum for the meeting.
Our correspondent says it is hoped the men can stop the crisis from escalating further.
On Wednesday, Mr Bashir reshuffled his cabinet removing Lam Akol as foreign minister.
Mr Akol, although a southerner, was seen as too close to the NCP.
But the SPLM says not all their suggestions for ministers from the south were agreed to.
After meeting Mr Bashir on Tuesday, Sudan Vice-President Riak Machar told the BBC that parts of the CPA that had not been implemented included:
The redeployment of northern troops from the south, especially from Unity and Upper Nile states
Issues of oil management and marketing
The final border demarcation which means the division of oil wealth cannot be completed
Issues to pave the way for a census in 2011, when the south could decide to split from the north.
Mr Riak said the north had until 9 January 2008, the third anniversary of the signing of the CPA, to resolve these issues.
Some 1.5m people died in Sudan's conflict - Africa's longest civil war - which pitted the mainly Muslim north against the Animist and Christian south before the CPA was agreed.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7050351.stm
Mr Kiir's ex-rebel group withdrew its ministers from government last week saying elements of a 2005 north-south peace pact were being ignored.
President Omar al-Bashir agreed in part to a request for a cabinet reshuffle.
But border demarcations and redeploying northern troops from the south are some of the things yet to be implemented.
The BBC's Amber Henshaw in the capital, Khartoum, says tensions have been brewing for months between the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the governing National Congress Party.
The two signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) two years ago that ended the 21-year civil war.
Under the CPA, the SPLM controls the southern regional government and participates in the national government in Khartoum.
But the enemies in war have struggled to become partners in peace, our reporter says.
Deadline
Mr Kiir - who is also the country's national vice-president - is travelling to Khartoum for the meeting.
Our correspondent says it is hoped the men can stop the crisis from escalating further.
On Wednesday, Mr Bashir reshuffled his cabinet removing Lam Akol as foreign minister.
Mr Akol, although a southerner, was seen as too close to the NCP.
But the SPLM says not all their suggestions for ministers from the south were agreed to.
After meeting Mr Bashir on Tuesday, Sudan Vice-President Riak Machar told the BBC that parts of the CPA that had not been implemented included:
The redeployment of northern troops from the south, especially from Unity and Upper Nile states
Issues of oil management and marketing
The final border demarcation which means the division of oil wealth cannot be completed
Issues to pave the way for a census in 2011, when the south could decide to split from the north.
Mr Riak said the north had until 9 January 2008, the third anniversary of the signing of the CPA, to resolve these issues.
Some 1.5m people died in Sudan's conflict - Africa's longest civil war - which pitted the mainly Muslim north against the Animist and Christian south before the CPA was agreed.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7050351.stm
Sunday, October 14, 2007
SUDAN: Darfur attack "targeted women and children"
NAIROBI, 10 October 2007 (IRIN) - The recent attack on Muhajiriya town in South Darfur, in which 45 people died and thousands fled their homes, mainly targeted women, children and the elderly, a rebel faction said.
"The government moved forces into the town two days earlier," Mohammed Bashir, spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said from Khartoum, the capital. "With air cover, they attacked the town, burnt down half of it and killed mainly children, women and the elderly."
The Sudanese army denied involvement in the 8 October attack, saying violence in Muhajiriya was a result of "tribal fighting between the citizens of the area".
Bashir said residents and internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled their homes were in desperate need of assistance. "They fled into [the bush]," he told IRIN by telephone on 10 October. "Although the town is calm now, they are still scared of going back to their homes."
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 45,000 internally displaced people were being assisted in and around Muhajiriya.
National and international aid workers from two NGOs were temporarily relocated after the attack, disrupting humanitarian operations.
"There are 20 wounded civilians who need to be taken to hospital," Bashir said. The SLA faction of Minni Minnawi, who signed a May 2006 peace deal and joined the Khartoum government, controls the area.
Amnesty International said the attack was supported by an Antonov, which had been painted in white UN colours. Since 2005, Sudan has been prohibited from offensive flights over Darfur and has been criticised for painting aircraft white, it said.
But spokesman Brigadier Osman Mohamed Al-Aghbash said the army had nothing to do with the incidents at Muhajiriya, adding that its planes had only conducted reconnaissance missions in Haskanita area under an arrangement with the African Union (AU).
"If these kinds of attacks continue, we will not sit without defending ourselves," the SLA spokesman warned. "It will also destroy trust ahead of the Libya talks."
The talks due to start in Sirte on 27 October are expected to bring together Darfur's armed factions and the Sudanese government to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in the region. Fears have, however, arisen that recent attacks could force some of the groups to boycott the event.
Amnesty, in a statement, warned that more attacks were imminent in northern Darfur. Sudanese forces, it added, were gathering in large numbers in at least six towns, including Tine, Kornoy, Um Baru, Kutum.
"The northern area of North Darfur is under the control of armed opposition groups and it looks as though the Sudan Armed Forces want to attack this area before peace talks scheduled to take place in Libya before the end of the month," according to Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of Amnesty's Africa Programme.
"We fear that civilians will once more suffer killing and displacement, with no force able to protect them."
The Muhajiriya attack followed an earlier one on Haskanita on 29 September. Ten AU peacekeepers were killed. Aid workers said that attack was carried out by an armed opposition group, but the town was occupied by Sudanese forces afterwards.
A UN assessment mission later found Haskanita had been burnt down. Sudanese authorities said the team had exaggerated its findings, adding that only the market was destroyed by a fire. The AU is investigating.
"The gathering of forces in the north, the burning of Haskanita last week, and yesterday's attack on Muhajiriya show the vital importance of ensuring that UNAMID [proposed UN-AU peacekeeping force] is deployed as soon as possible and has the resources available to protect civilians," said Hondora.
Preparations to deploy the force are ongoing, but the mission still lacks ground transport, light tactical helicopters and transport helicopters, according to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Affairs, Jean-Marie Guéhenno.
Aid workers fear the upsurge in violence will further restrict the ability of the few humanitarian workers left in Darfur to reach thousands of vulnerable civilians.
"The government moved forces into the town two days earlier," Mohammed Bashir, spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said from Khartoum, the capital. "With air cover, they attacked the town, burnt down half of it and killed mainly children, women and the elderly."
The Sudanese army denied involvement in the 8 October attack, saying violence in Muhajiriya was a result of "tribal fighting between the citizens of the area".
Bashir said residents and internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled their homes were in desperate need of assistance. "They fled into [the bush]," he told IRIN by telephone on 10 October. "Although the town is calm now, they are still scared of going back to their homes."
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 45,000 internally displaced people were being assisted in and around Muhajiriya.
National and international aid workers from two NGOs were temporarily relocated after the attack, disrupting humanitarian operations.
"There are 20 wounded civilians who need to be taken to hospital," Bashir said. The SLA faction of Minni Minnawi, who signed a May 2006 peace deal and joined the Khartoum government, controls the area.
Amnesty International said the attack was supported by an Antonov, which had been painted in white UN colours. Since 2005, Sudan has been prohibited from offensive flights over Darfur and has been criticised for painting aircraft white, it said.
But spokesman Brigadier Osman Mohamed Al-Aghbash said the army had nothing to do with the incidents at Muhajiriya, adding that its planes had only conducted reconnaissance missions in Haskanita area under an arrangement with the African Union (AU).
"If these kinds of attacks continue, we will not sit without defending ourselves," the SLA spokesman warned. "It will also destroy trust ahead of the Libya talks."
The talks due to start in Sirte on 27 October are expected to bring together Darfur's armed factions and the Sudanese government to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in the region. Fears have, however, arisen that recent attacks could force some of the groups to boycott the event.
Amnesty, in a statement, warned that more attacks were imminent in northern Darfur. Sudanese forces, it added, were gathering in large numbers in at least six towns, including Tine, Kornoy, Um Baru, Kutum.
"The northern area of North Darfur is under the control of armed opposition groups and it looks as though the Sudan Armed Forces want to attack this area before peace talks scheduled to take place in Libya before the end of the month," according to Tawanda Hondora, deputy director of Amnesty's Africa Programme.
"We fear that civilians will once more suffer killing and displacement, with no force able to protect them."
The Muhajiriya attack followed an earlier one on Haskanita on 29 September. Ten AU peacekeepers were killed. Aid workers said that attack was carried out by an armed opposition group, but the town was occupied by Sudanese forces afterwards.
A UN assessment mission later found Haskanita had been burnt down. Sudanese authorities said the team had exaggerated its findings, adding that only the market was destroyed by a fire. The AU is investigating.
"The gathering of forces in the north, the burning of Haskanita last week, and yesterday's attack on Muhajiriya show the vital importance of ensuring that UNAMID [proposed UN-AU peacekeeping force] is deployed as soon as possible and has the resources available to protect civilians," said Hondora.
Preparations to deploy the force are ongoing, but the mission still lacks ground transport, light tactical helicopters and transport helicopters, according to the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Affairs, Jean-Marie Guéhenno.
Aid workers fear the upsurge in violence will further restrict the ability of the few humanitarian workers left in Darfur to reach thousands of vulnerable civilians.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Violence forces MSF to evacuate team from Muhajariya, South Darfur
October 9, 2007
The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) evacuated a team of 16 aid workers from Muhajariya in South Darfur, Sudan, yesterday, following an intense attack on the town.
Shooting was first heard in Muhajariya in the morning on October 8. By 1 p.m., it had intensified, and patients started to flee the hospital. The MSF team sought shelter in their compound while shooting and mortar fire continued. One person reached the MSF compound and was treated for a gunshot wound. Some staff members fled in an attempt to get their families to safety.
Early on October 9, shooting started up again in the market area. When the team reached the hospital, the structure was completely deserted. Houses and huts in the neighborhood were also emptied as people gathered their possessions and fled.
Prior to the attack, there were 43 patients hospitalized, including pregnant women about to deliver, 15 children with severe pneumonia, and malnourished children in the feeding center.
An estimated additional 39 wounded people are among the thousands seeking refuge on the outskirts of Muhajariya and further away. MSF medical teams attempted to set up a small treatment center to provide care for the wounded, but with ongoing fighting and rumors of more attacks, it is too dangerous to keep a medical team on the ground.
Since MSF runs the only hospital in Muhajariya, the evacuation of the team means that people are urgently in need of medical care. MSF hopes to be able to return to the area as soon as possible to provide medical assistance.
Since July 2004, MSF has provided humanitarian medical assistance to the resident population and successive waves of displaced people in Muhajariya. With an average of 4,000 consultations a month this year, the hospital provides care for patients suffering from diarrhea and respiratory infections; ante- and post-natal services for women; emergency surgery; and a children's nutrition program for a population of 70,000. Today, Darfur is one of MSF's largest missions with 120 international and more than 1,800 national staff working throughout an area the size of France.
© 2007 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) evacuated a team of 16 aid workers from Muhajariya in South Darfur, Sudan, yesterday, following an intense attack on the town.
Shooting was first heard in Muhajariya in the morning on October 8. By 1 p.m., it had intensified, and patients started to flee the hospital. The MSF team sought shelter in their compound while shooting and mortar fire continued. One person reached the MSF compound and was treated for a gunshot wound. Some staff members fled in an attempt to get their families to safety.
Early on October 9, shooting started up again in the market area. When the team reached the hospital, the structure was completely deserted. Houses and huts in the neighborhood were also emptied as people gathered their possessions and fled.
Prior to the attack, there were 43 patients hospitalized, including pregnant women about to deliver, 15 children with severe pneumonia, and malnourished children in the feeding center.
An estimated additional 39 wounded people are among the thousands seeking refuge on the outskirts of Muhajariya and further away. MSF medical teams attempted to set up a small treatment center to provide care for the wounded, but with ongoing fighting and rumors of more attacks, it is too dangerous to keep a medical team on the ground.
Since MSF runs the only hospital in Muhajariya, the evacuation of the team means that people are urgently in need of medical care. MSF hopes to be able to return to the area as soon as possible to provide medical assistance.
Since July 2004, MSF has provided humanitarian medical assistance to the resident population and successive waves of displaced people in Muhajariya. With an average of 4,000 consultations a month this year, the hospital provides care for patients suffering from diarrhea and respiratory infections; ante- and post-natal services for women; emergency surgery; and a children's nutrition program for a population of 70,000. Today, Darfur is one of MSF's largest missions with 120 international and more than 1,800 national staff working throughout an area the size of France.
© 2007 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
Monday, October 1, 2007
Influential rebel condemns Darfur attack on AU troops
01 Oct 2007 09:34:42 GMT
Source: Reuters
Alert Me | Print | Email this article | RSS
Background
Darfur conflict
Sudan conflicts
More
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, Oct 1 (Reuters) - An influential member of a rebel group blamed for the deadliest attack on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur condemned the assault and called on Monday for the group's leaders to withdraw from the area.
Eighteen AU soldiers were killed or injured and 40 were missing after a "deliberate and sustained" assault on the Haskanita base in Darfur on Saturday night by armed men in 30 vehicles, who looted and destroyed the base, the AU said.
It was the worst single attack on AU forces since the 7,000-strong mission was deployed in 2004.
Suleiman Jamous, a member of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction which is one of two groups accused of the attack, said if his faction was involved it was a local decision, not ordered by the leadership.
"I have asked the leadership of SLA Unity to withdraw all the troops from the area, to where they can be under the direct control of the military command," Jamous said.
"And I have asked them to investigate to find out who, if any, SLA Unity commanders were involved. They have attacked the mediators and I offer my condolences to the families of the AU soldiers," said the elder rebel who is not in Darfur.
SLA Unity and a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Bahr Idriss Abu Garda have forces in the Haskanita area. Other JEM commanders said Abu Garda and a SLA Unity commander had the stolen AU vehicles.
While AU convoys and individuals have been ambushed -- around 40 killed in the three years prior to the Haskanita attack -- this was the first time an entire base was targeted.
NO PLAN FOR DEFENCE
AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said the mission was making contingency plans and reassessing security. But he said little more could be done without getting desperately needed additional equipment and troops into Darfur.
"We've come up with contingency plans, we have to improve," said Agwai, who took up his post only a few months ago. "We are reassessing everything and we have learned some lessons."
After a long day evacuating all the bodies, injured and traumatised survivors, Agwai defended the AU force, whose mission was to stem the violence in Darfur.
"People did deployment on the premise that there was an (peace) agreement and they were coming to inspect and act as observers -- there was no planning for people to be able defend themselves," he said.
The AU mediated a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels in May 2006 but only one of three rebel negotiating factions signed the deal. Since then, rebels have split into a dozen factions.
The violence, which includes militias and tribal conflicts, has severely curtailed the world's largest aid operation.
The AU has long complained of a lack of equipment, including attack helicopters and rapid response vehicles. They have also said their force was too small to contain the conflict in the vast and arid region.
"I don't know how they want us to do it without the facilities," Agwai said, adding driving normally it would take 4-1/2 hours to reinforce Haskanita and under attack, an entire day.
"We are just 5,000 plus military men scattered in an area as big as France with no roads," he added.
Agwai will command the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops and police due to absorb the AU mission and remedy the chaotic security situation in Darfur.
SECURE THE AREA
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in Darfur, with 2.5 million driven from their homes as mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglect. Khartoum mobilised mainly Arab militias to quell the revolt.
Emphasising the AU's inability to deal with such an attack, it asked for Khartoum's help to secure the area and evacuate personnel using Sudan Armed Forces planes, the army said.
"We offered all the help we could. We have secured the area and moved the injured," a SAF spokesman said.
The attack is likely to overshadow AU-U.N.-mediated talks due to begin in Libya on Oct. 27. Mediators Salim Ahmed Salim and Jan Eliasson expressed "shock and dismay" at the attack.
"The Special Envoys urge all parties to the conflict to demonstrate a serious commitment to the peace process and to cease hostilities," they said in a statement.
The attack preceded a visit of "elders" to Sudan, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter, veteran peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi and womens and children's rights advocate Graca Machel.
On Monday they are due to meet Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The trip to Darfur and southern Sudan is the group's first public mission since its inception this year.
AlertNet news
Source: Reuters
Alert Me | Print | Email this article | RSS
Background
Darfur conflict
Sudan conflicts
More
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, Oct 1 (Reuters) - An influential member of a rebel group blamed for the deadliest attack on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur condemned the assault and called on Monday for the group's leaders to withdraw from the area.
Eighteen AU soldiers were killed or injured and 40 were missing after a "deliberate and sustained" assault on the Haskanita base in Darfur on Saturday night by armed men in 30 vehicles, who looted and destroyed the base, the AU said.
It was the worst single attack on AU forces since the 7,000-strong mission was deployed in 2004.
Suleiman Jamous, a member of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction which is one of two groups accused of the attack, said if his faction was involved it was a local decision, not ordered by the leadership.
"I have asked the leadership of SLA Unity to withdraw all the troops from the area, to where they can be under the direct control of the military command," Jamous said.
"And I have asked them to investigate to find out who, if any, SLA Unity commanders were involved. They have attacked the mediators and I offer my condolences to the families of the AU soldiers," said the elder rebel who is not in Darfur.
SLA Unity and a breakaway faction of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Bahr Idriss Abu Garda have forces in the Haskanita area. Other JEM commanders said Abu Garda and a SLA Unity commander had the stolen AU vehicles.
While AU convoys and individuals have been ambushed -- around 40 killed in the three years prior to the Haskanita attack -- this was the first time an entire base was targeted.
NO PLAN FOR DEFENCE
AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said the mission was making contingency plans and reassessing security. But he said little more could be done without getting desperately needed additional equipment and troops into Darfur.
"We've come up with contingency plans, we have to improve," said Agwai, who took up his post only a few months ago. "We are reassessing everything and we have learned some lessons."
After a long day evacuating all the bodies, injured and traumatised survivors, Agwai defended the AU force, whose mission was to stem the violence in Darfur.
"People did deployment on the premise that there was an (peace) agreement and they were coming to inspect and act as observers -- there was no planning for people to be able defend themselves," he said.
The AU mediated a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels in May 2006 but only one of three rebel negotiating factions signed the deal. Since then, rebels have split into a dozen factions.
The violence, which includes militias and tribal conflicts, has severely curtailed the world's largest aid operation.
The AU has long complained of a lack of equipment, including attack helicopters and rapid response vehicles. They have also said their force was too small to contain the conflict in the vast and arid region.
"I don't know how they want us to do it without the facilities," Agwai said, adding driving normally it would take 4-1/2 hours to reinforce Haskanita and under attack, an entire day.
"We are just 5,000 plus military men scattered in an area as big as France with no roads," he added.
Agwai will command the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops and police due to absorb the AU mission and remedy the chaotic security situation in Darfur.
SECURE THE AREA
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died in Darfur, with 2.5 million driven from their homes as mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglect. Khartoum mobilised mainly Arab militias to quell the revolt.
Emphasising the AU's inability to deal with such an attack, it asked for Khartoum's help to secure the area and evacuate personnel using Sudan Armed Forces planes, the army said.
"We offered all the help we could. We have secured the area and moved the injured," a SAF spokesman said.
The attack is likely to overshadow AU-U.N.-mediated talks due to begin in Libya on Oct. 27. Mediators Salim Ahmed Salim and Jan Eliasson expressed "shock and dismay" at the attack.
"The Special Envoys urge all parties to the conflict to demonstrate a serious commitment to the peace process and to cease hostilities," they said in a statement.
The attack preceded a visit of "elders" to Sudan, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter, veteran peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi and womens and children's rights advocate Graca Machel.
On Monday they are due to meet Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The trip to Darfur and southern Sudan is the group's first public mission since its inception this year.
AlertNet news
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Eastern Congo: IRC Launches Response in North Kivu, Delivering Medicine to Desperate Village
Rutshuru, Congo 26 Sep 2007 - The International Rescue Committee’s emergency team has delivered medicine to a village in North Kivu’s Rutshuru District, launching a relief effort that aims to provide lifesaving assistance to tens of thousands of people hit by spiraling violence.
The IRC team brought a month’s worth of drugs to a clinic that had completely run out in the tiny village of Kabaya, where some 4,000 displaced people are seeking refuge—more than doubling the size of the already destitute hamlet.
“The displaced have crowded into the village’s school and church and others are staying with families who hardly have the means to care for themselves,” says Bob Kitchen, who is leading the emergency response operation.
“Aside from a clinic with no drugs and a squalid delivery room, we also found that there are no water points within Kabaya. The women have to walk out of the village to the closest water source, which is unprotected, dirty and also happens to be at the start of rebel-held territory. It’s risky any way you look at it,” Kitchen adds.
Female members of the team met with displaced women who spoke of sexual assaults by all armed forces in the conflict and no where to go for help.
The IRC initially plans to provide technical support and more medical supplies to the Kabaya clinic and similar assistance for two other clinics in the volatile district, as well as aid for sexual violence survivors. The IRC is also preparing to improve water supply and sanitation services in areas hosting displaced communities.
After a brief period of calm, clashes resumed this week between government troops and rebels groups, the largest made up of fighters loyal to General Laurent Nkunda.
Kitchen expressed concern that the fighting is leading to road closures which are severely hampering access to people in need of humanitarian aid.
The IRC team brought a month’s worth of drugs to a clinic that had completely run out in the tiny village of Kabaya, where some 4,000 displaced people are seeking refuge—more than doubling the size of the already destitute hamlet.
“The displaced have crowded into the village’s school and church and others are staying with families who hardly have the means to care for themselves,” says Bob Kitchen, who is leading the emergency response operation.
“Aside from a clinic with no drugs and a squalid delivery room, we also found that there are no water points within Kabaya. The women have to walk out of the village to the closest water source, which is unprotected, dirty and also happens to be at the start of rebel-held territory. It’s risky any way you look at it,” Kitchen adds.
Female members of the team met with displaced women who spoke of sexual assaults by all armed forces in the conflict and no where to go for help.
The IRC initially plans to provide technical support and more medical supplies to the Kabaya clinic and similar assistance for two other clinics in the volatile district, as well as aid for sexual violence survivors. The IRC is also preparing to improve water supply and sanitation services in areas hosting displaced communities.
After a brief period of calm, clashes resumed this week between government troops and rebels groups, the largest made up of fighters loyal to General Laurent Nkunda.
Kitchen expressed concern that the fighting is leading to road closures which are severely hampering access to people in need of humanitarian aid.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Eritrea insists Ethiopia implements border ruling
NAIROBI, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Eritrea maintains its demand that Ethiopia implement a border ruling agreed under a pact to end their 1998-2000 war, a minister said on Wednesday after Ethiopia threatened to call off the peace agreement.
In a letter to Eritrea's Foreign Minister on Tuesday, Ethiopia accused Asmara of violating the deal on several fronts including coordinating "terrorist activity".
Addis Ababa said as a result it was considering terminating or suspending all or part the Algiers agreement that ended the two-year border conflict that killed 70,000 people.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said Asmara had no knowledge of any such letter and that it was Ethiopia's concern.
"That's not our business. It's up to them," he told Reuters by telephone.
"What we know is there has been a legal verdict and what we want is the implementation of that. No more, no less."
Relations between the Horn of Africa neighbours plummeted when Ethiopia initially rejected a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission, despite agreeing beforehand to accept whatever the commission ruled as final and binding.
Earlier this month, Ethiopia said its soldiers were just metres (yards) apart from Eritrean troops who moved into what is supposed to be a neutral buffer zone.
Analysts and diplomats say neither country wants to go to war, in spite of the inflammatory rhetoric on both sides. But they worry that an unplanned skirmish could trigger conflict.
The two countries are on opposite sides of the conflict in Somalia, with Ethiopia backing the government and Eritrea Islamists forced out of Mogadishu in December.
Eritrea denies Ethiopia's allegations of support for armed groups. This month, it accused Ethiopia of scuppering demarcation talks on their 1,000 km (620 mile) frontier.
Abdu ruled out any dialogue.
"There was not, there is not and there will not be any direct communication between us," he said.
AlertNet news is provided by Reuters
In a letter to Eritrea's Foreign Minister on Tuesday, Ethiopia accused Asmara of violating the deal on several fronts including coordinating "terrorist activity".
Addis Ababa said as a result it was considering terminating or suspending all or part the Algiers agreement that ended the two-year border conflict that killed 70,000 people.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said Asmara had no knowledge of any such letter and that it was Ethiopia's concern.
"That's not our business. It's up to them," he told Reuters by telephone.
"What we know is there has been a legal verdict and what we want is the implementation of that. No more, no less."
Relations between the Horn of Africa neighbours plummeted when Ethiopia initially rejected a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission, despite agreeing beforehand to accept whatever the commission ruled as final and binding.
Earlier this month, Ethiopia said its soldiers were just metres (yards) apart from Eritrean troops who moved into what is supposed to be a neutral buffer zone.
Analysts and diplomats say neither country wants to go to war, in spite of the inflammatory rhetoric on both sides. But they worry that an unplanned skirmish could trigger conflict.
The two countries are on opposite sides of the conflict in Somalia, with Ethiopia backing the government and Eritrea Islamists forced out of Mogadishu in December.
Eritrea denies Ethiopia's allegations of support for armed groups. This month, it accused Ethiopia of scuppering demarcation talks on their 1,000 km (620 mile) frontier.
Abdu ruled out any dialogue.
"There was not, there is not and there will not be any direct communication between us," he said.
AlertNet news is provided by Reuters
UNHCR welcomes resolution on Chad, Central African Republic
NEW YORK – UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres welcomed the adoption today of a UN Security Council resolution establishing a multi-dimensional UN mission in Chad and Central African Republic (MINURCAT) that will help strengthen security in the region.
He looks forward to an early decision of the European Union to send military troops so that MINURCAT can deploy in the coming weeks and months.
Improving the security of the refugees, IDPs and other civilians in danger as well as facilitating the provision of humanitarian assistance will greatly contribute toward stabilizing the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad and may contribute to the return of displaced persons, Guterres said.
This is most urgent given that the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad is "very difficult and serious" and the fear of increasing violence, causing more people to flee, with the approaching end of the rainy season.
He also emphasized the need for a comprehensive and sub-regional approach to the conflicts in the Darfur region, eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR. In the longer term, UNHCR appeals to the international community to provide recovery and development assistance so that the displaced can return and restart their lives as well as rebuild communities, given the heavy burden the people of Chad and CAR face.
Since 2004, eastern Chad has hosted some 240,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps who have fled the fighting in Darfur. In addition, Chad is facing a surge in the number of internally displaced persons, now totaling more than 170,000.
North-eastern CAR hosts some 2,660 refugees from Darfur.
Today's resolution establishes MINURCAT for a period of one year, with a mandate focusing on the security and protection of civilians – particularly refugees, IDPs and civilians in danger – and on human rights and the rule of law in eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR.
MINURCAT will consist of three components:
- a UN multidimensional presence, composed of UN police, rule of law, human rights and other civilian officers;
- a special Chadian police/gendarmes unit (some 850) dedicated exclusively to maintaining law and order in refugee camps, sites with concentrations of IDPs and key towns, and assisting in securing humanitarian activities in eastern Chad;
- an EU military deployment (under Chapter VII).
The military contingent would have a mandate to contribute to the protection of civilians in danger, particularly refugees and displaced persons; to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and the free movement of humanitarian personnel by helping to improve security in the area of operation; and to contribute to protecting UN personnel, facilities, installations and equipment and to ensuring the security and freedom of movement of its staff and UN and associated personnel.
UNHCR news
He looks forward to an early decision of the European Union to send military troops so that MINURCAT can deploy in the coming weeks and months.
Improving the security of the refugees, IDPs and other civilians in danger as well as facilitating the provision of humanitarian assistance will greatly contribute toward stabilizing the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad and may contribute to the return of displaced persons, Guterres said.
This is most urgent given that the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad is "very difficult and serious" and the fear of increasing violence, causing more people to flee, with the approaching end of the rainy season.
He also emphasized the need for a comprehensive and sub-regional approach to the conflicts in the Darfur region, eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR. In the longer term, UNHCR appeals to the international community to provide recovery and development assistance so that the displaced can return and restart their lives as well as rebuild communities, given the heavy burden the people of Chad and CAR face.
Since 2004, eastern Chad has hosted some 240,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps who have fled the fighting in Darfur. In addition, Chad is facing a surge in the number of internally displaced persons, now totaling more than 170,000.
North-eastern CAR hosts some 2,660 refugees from Darfur.
Today's resolution establishes MINURCAT for a period of one year, with a mandate focusing on the security and protection of civilians – particularly refugees, IDPs and civilians in danger – and on human rights and the rule of law in eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR.
MINURCAT will consist of three components:
- a UN multidimensional presence, composed of UN police, rule of law, human rights and other civilian officers;
- a special Chadian police/gendarmes unit (some 850) dedicated exclusively to maintaining law and order in refugee camps, sites with concentrations of IDPs and key towns, and assisting in securing humanitarian activities in eastern Chad;
- an EU military deployment (under Chapter VII).
The military contingent would have a mandate to contribute to the protection of civilians in danger, particularly refugees and displaced persons; to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and the free movement of humanitarian personnel by helping to improve security in the area of operation; and to contribute to protecting UN personnel, facilities, installations and equipment and to ensuring the security and freedom of movement of its staff and UN and associated personnel.
UNHCR news
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
