Delay, Obstruction & Darfur

Dec 10, 2007 - New York Times

The world’s leaders say they care desperately about Darfur’s suffering, until they get distracted. It took years of international hand-wringing before the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to send in 26,000 peacekeepers to replace a current force of 7,000, to try to halt the killing. With the deployment now set for Jan. 1, major countries are ignoring the U.N.’s appeals for essential aircraft, and Sudan’s government — which unleashed the genocide — is again reneging on its promises to cooperate.

Khartoum is now refusing to accept some non-African peacekeeping units — including a Thai infantry battalion and a Nepalese special forces unit — in what is intended to be a joint United Nations-African Union force. It is also trying to limit the peacekeepers’ use of helicopters, refusing to provide land for a peacekeeping base and insisting on other untenable restrictions, including advance notice of all troop movements.

Khartoum never seems to run out of ways to demonstrate its contempt for the United Nations.

After the International Criminal Court indicted Ahmad Harun, Sudan’s minister of state for humanitarian affairs, for war crimes in Darfur, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, refused to turn him over for prosecution. Instead, Mr. Bashir put Mr. Harun on a committee overseeing deployment of the new peacekeeping mission.
President Bashir and his henchmen may be the worst problem, but not the only one.
There are serious questions about whether the United Nations can manage such a large peacekeeping operation. Meanwhile, major players — including South Africa, Russia, China, Ukraine and NATO — have not heeded a direct appeal from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to provide the helicopters and planes that the force will need to do its job, or even defend itself, in a region the size of France.

The United States has already flown in troops for the new force, promised $40 million in equipment and offered to pay 26 percent of the total cost of the operation. If others don’t step in quickly, Washington will need to twist their arms or do even more itself.

By some accounts, deaths in Darfur are down, but the region remains in severe crisis. People who flocked to refugee camps as a temporary escape from the government-backed janjaweed militias have been trapped there for nearly five years. Life inside the camps, where crime is rampant, is only slightly better than life outside. The rebel groups who claim to be Darfur’s defenders are increasingly fragmented and adding to the violence.

Darfuris have high hopes that the new United Nations-African Union mission will save them, but so far there is no peace to keep.
Sudan has showed time and again that it does not care about the suffering in Darfur. Without a lot more international pressure, Sudan will continue to obstruct the peacekeeping mission and spread ever more suffering and mayhem. China, one of Sudan’s major trading partners, and the Arab League must bring on that pressure. And the U.N. and other envoys must work full time for the resumption of peace talks.
The credibility of the Security Council is on the line. So are the lives of 2.5 million Darfuris.

Lack of helicopters threatens Darfur mission

United Nations, Dec 6/2007 (AFP News)

The success of the planned UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region is in peril for a lack of equipment such as crucial helicopters, UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday. "We must absolutely have an effective, robust force. Without it, there can be no security," the secretary general told reporters. "But for this we need on-the-ground capability -- specifically helicopters. We're not getting them. Because of that the entire mission is at risk," he said, pleading with member states to supply 24 helicopters still not provided. The joint force of 26,000 mainly African troops (UNAMID) is to replace the under-funded and ill-equipped 7,000-strong African Union force known as AMIS which has served trying to stem the bloodshed in Darfur since 2004. But UNAMID 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. "We are at a critical point. Time is running out," Ban said, two days before he was to fly to Bali, Indonesia for a key international conference on climate change. "We have only three weeks to go before the transfer of authority from AMIS to UNAMID." The secretary general said he had personally contacted "every possible contributor ... to no avail." And he announced that he had just sent a letter to the UN Security Council in which he also complained that despite his repeated appeals, "no member state has come forward to provide these vital assets."

In his letter, Ban said outsourcing the transport helicopters to civilian contractors had been considered but that it was "determined that, given the non-permissive security environment in Darfur, a civilian contractor would not be able to transport troops who would be required to respond to emergency security situations." He called on Security Council members to "live up to their responsibility to deliver" on implementation of their resolution on the establishment of UNAMID, noting: "It is time for them to walk their talk."

Diplomats have said several Western countries in a position to provide the helicopters are reluctant to do so because of a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of UNAMID's command and control structure. Ban said he was sending two senior advisers to the European Union-African Union summit in Lisbon this weekend "to directly engage with as many key leaders as possible on the subject." The two aides, UN Assistant Secretary General for peacekeeping operations Edmond Mulet and Ban's deputy chief of staff Kim Won-soo, were also to try to iron out remaining logistical issues with Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir and his delegation, including acquisition of land for UNAMID peacekeepers and permission for night flights.

Ban said his aides would also try to get formal confirmation that Khartoum, as suggested by Sudan's UN envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad, had lifted its objections to UN plans to include contingents from Nepal and Thailand in UNAMID. UN planners also want to assign a Scandinavian engineering unit to the joint force. The UN chief warned that without an effective, robustly equipped UNAMID, there could be "no credible progress" in the deadlocked peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels. "Rebel leaders will simply not join the process without an effective peacekeeping force in place," he noted.

On Wednesday UN and AU mediators held a fresh meeting in Sudan with Darfur rebel leaders who had boycotted peace talks with Khartoum in Libya last October, to coax them into forging "common ground" for the next round of bargaining in the Libyan city of Sirte. UNAMID is tasked with ending more than four years of bloodshed in which more than 200,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease in the western Sudanese region, while 2.2 million others have been left homeless. War in Darfur pits black ethnic groups against government troops backed by Arab militias.

"High risk" of Arab insurgency in Darfur

Nairobi - IRIN News (Nov 26/07)

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has cautioned that new dynamics in Sudan's Darfur crisis could result in an Arab insurgency and a possible spillover of the conflict into neighbouring Kordofan.
"Inter-Arab dissension has added new volatility to the situation on the ground," ICG states in a report, Darfur's New Security Reality, launched on 26 November in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. "Some tribes are trying to solidify land claims before the UN/AU [UN-African Union] hybrid peacekeeping operation in Darfur (UNAMID) arrives."

This, ICG said, had led to fighting with other Arab tribes, which have realised that the Khartoum-based central government "is not a guarantor of their long-term interests and have started to take protection into their own hands".
"There is now a high risk of an Arab insurgency, as well as potential for alliances with the predominantly non-Arab rebel groups," ICG added.

ICG noted that the Darfur conflict had changed radically in the past year and "not for the better". The conflict has caused the deaths of at least 200,000 civilians and the displacement of more than two million others.

"While there are many fewer deaths than during the high period of fighting in 2003-2004, [the conflict] has mutated, the parties have splintered, and the confrontations have multiplied," ICG stated. "Violence is again increasing, access for humanitarian agencies is decreasing, international peacekeeping is not yet effective and a political settlement remains far off."

Among other recommendations, ICG said the new realities in Darfur underscore the need to broaden UN-AU mediated peace talks that began on 27 October in Sirte, Libya. It said the talks should include the "full range of actors and constituencies involved in the conflict, including its primary victims, such as women, but also Arab tribes.
"Core issues that drive the conflict, among them land tenure and use, including grazing rights, and the role and reform of local government and administrative structures, were not addressed in the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in May 2006] but left to the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation process that was supposed to follow the negotiations," ICG stated. "They need to be on the agenda of the new negotiations if an eventual agreement is to gain the wide support the DPA has lacked."

Sally Chin, ICG's Nairobi-based Horn of Africa analyst, said the DPA, signed between the government and a single rebel faction, had failed because it was limited in scope and in signatories, which had hurt the ongoing peace process.
She said the central government's strategy in Darfur was one of "chaos, divide-and-rule and demographic manipulation".

"The NCP [National Congress Party] wants Darfur in chaos to limit the room for an opposition to emerge, while resettling key allies on cleared land and defying [UN] Security Council resolutions by integrating its Janjaweed irregulars into official security structures instead of disarming them," according to the ICG.

It added that the ruling party was pursuing "destructive policies" in Darfur while at the same time resisting key provisions in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the North-South war, "thus triggering a crisis in that process".
François Grignon, ICG's Africa programme director, said the priority was to end fighting in Darfur and this could be done with the negotiation of a ceasefire that includes a penalty for violations.

"A ceasefire without costs means no commitment from the parties involved," Grignon said. "Political will is one of the commodities that is in rare supply in such a situation and putting costs to violation of the commitment the parties make is one way of ensuring progress in the peace process."

Previous ceasefire declarations, the last one made by the Sudanese government during the start of the Darfur peace talks in Sirte, have largely been ignored by the parties involved in the Darfur conflict.

UNAMID is expected to be deployed in Darfur in early 2008, but ICG said that when it is on the ground, the force must be more active in protecting civilians and responding to ceasefire violations.

UNAMID must prioritise protection of camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), humanitarian assistance and key transportation routes, "including by working with all parties to set up demilitarized zones around camps and humanitarian supply routes".

Beshir ups ante in Sudan crises

WEDMADANI, Sudan, Nov 17, 2007 - AFP News

President Omar al-Beshir on Saturday ordered the reopening of auxiliary training camps in Sudan to prepare for war and refused to accept certain countries from sending peacekeepers to Darfur. In a fiery speech to his Arab heartland, Beshir spoke as a political crisis threatens peace between north and south Sudan, and toughened his stance against US criticism that Khartoum is obstructing a UN-African Union peace mission. "We order the legitimate sons of the people to open their camps... not to declare war but to be ready," he said in the capital of Al-Jazira state to mark 18 years of a popular defence forces unit linked to his political party. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement, former southern rebels who once battled the auxiliary, walked out of the Khartoum government last month. They brand the popular defence forces a "militia" of Beshir's National Congress Party and wanted it dissolved -- one of a series of disputes that saw talks between the SPLM and the north collapse last Sunday. Beshir levelled all blame on southerners for violations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Africa's longest-running civil war in 2005, denying his northern government had any responsibility. "It is them, the southerners, who violated the agreement numerous times," he added in a speech peppered with references to the Koran and holy war. "We told our brothers in the SPLM that neither America, Britain or Europe are more keen for peace than us," he said. "America, Britain and Europe are liars and hypocrites who want our resources and that's why they stole our children to sell in a slave market in Europe," he added, referring to a French charity's attempt to fly children out of Chad.

On the fate of the oil-rich Abiye region, another source of conflict between north and south, Beshir said northerners would accept only a border demarcation dating back to 1905 which would give them full control of the area. Relations between Khartoum and the south have become increasingly unstable and talks aimed at resolving the political crisis broke down last Sunday. Their 2005 peace agreement provided for a six-year transition period in which the south would enjoy regional autonomy and participate in a national unity government in Khartoum.

Switching his attention to a prospective UN-African Union peacekeeping mission to western Sudan's war-torn Darfur, Beshir said the "boots of those who attacked the prophet Mohammed would never trample on Sudanese land". He was referring to Swedes and Norwegians who want to participate in a UN-African Union hybrid force set to deploy to Darfur. They incurred a tidal wave of criticism in the Islamic world after newspapers in the two countries last year published cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet that sparked global controversy. Beshir also said Sudan would not allow Nepal or Thailand to send troops to Darfur, although said he agreed with the United Nations for engineering troops to arrive from China and Pakistan.

On Thursday, US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Washington was "deeply troubled" by "foot-dragging and obstruction" from Sudan over the joint peacekeeping force. The head of the UN department of peacekeeping operations, Jean Marie Guehenno, also said this week that the 26,000-member prospective peacekeeping force may fail without air mobility and firepower. More than four years of conflict in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people from the combined effects of war, famine and disease while 2.2 million others have been left homeless by what the United States calls genocide.

Sudan fears organ trafficking

KHARTOUM, Nov 19, 2007 - AFP News

A top official in Sudan's main ruling National Congress Party said Monday that a French charity's attempt to fly out more than 100 African children was perhaps a cover for organ trafficking. "The question is why these children were being taken to the West? Perhaps to provide organs such as hearts and kidneys to elderly patients," Nafie Ali Nafie, number two of the NCP, told a party news conference. "Other than that, the affair underscores a decline in moral values of those who falsely pretend to defend human rights," added the vice president of the NCP, which is led by Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir. "I cannot believe France did not know," said Nafie, despite denials from the French authorities.

Six French members of charity Zoe's Ark and four Sudanese officials are being held in Chad, pending an investigation into alleged child abduction that has been vigorously denounced by Sudan. Zoe's Ark says the children were orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur who it planned to place in foster care with families in Europe. But Chad says the group did not have permission to take the children out of the country, and aid agencies have since said most are Chadian with at least one living parent.

Hybrid force for Darfur sets up base

November 1, 2007 - IRIN News

The African Union (AU)/UN hybrid mission in Darfur (UNAMID), which is set to replace the AU's African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) has inaugurated its operational base in the town of El Fasher.

UNAMID, established by the Security Council in July 2007, will eventually comprise 19,555 military and 6,432 police personnel, making it one of the largest UN peacekeeping missions in history.

It is widely hoped that the hybrid force will be more effective in protecting civilians in Darfur than AMIS, which was made up of just 7,000 troops.

"Today [31 October] UNAMID marks its first day in its El Fasher Headquarters, completing preparations to assume operational command authority as requested by the Security Council," Rodolphe Adada, UN-AU Joint Special Representative for Darfur said in a statement. "We have already completed the pre-handover preparations involving deployment and movement of command elements and key staff to their designated offices, spaces and installations throughout Darfur."

Officials from both the UN and AU were already conducting pre-deployment visits to countries that have pledged to contribute soldiers, to inspect the troops and their equipment. The joint mission has not received adequate pledges for specialised units, such as air and land transport support, Adada said.

The troops are expected from Burkina Faso, Egypt, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. Other potential contributors are Bangladesh, Jordan, Nordic countries, Nepal, Netherlands and Thailand.

polio vaccination campaign

New polio case forces Sudan to re-vaccinate

Oct 23, 2007 - AFP News

Sudanese children are to be vaccinated against polio as part of a campaign kicking off on Tuesday, after the first case in two years was discovered last month, the UN children's fund said. UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) together with the Sudanese health ministry said in a joint statement that immunisations will begin across Sudan from October 23 to 25, with another wave in November. Last month, WHO confirmed a case of polio in a two-year-old boy from the violence-stricken region of Darfur, who was found paralysed by the disease. "The virus has been genetically linked to the virus circulating in (neighbouring) Chad, where six cases were confirmed this year," the joint statement said. Attacks against humanitarian workers are frequent in Darfur where a four-year civil war has killed at least 200,000 people and displaced two million others. Khartoum contests the figure and says only 9,000 died in the conflict. UNICEF representative in Sudan Ted Chaiban urged all parties in the conflict in Darfur to ensure that children are fully protected. He called for a "firm commitment from those involved in the ongoing conflict in Darfur to guarantee safe access and movement for vaccination teams." Sudan, which was declared polio-free two years ago, was one of eight African countries to agree in 2005 to carry out mass immunisations against polio, amid a resurgence of the disease despite UN efforts to eradicate it by 2000.

Darfur cease-fire

Sudan to announce Darfur cease-fire at start of talks with rebels this week

Oct 23, 2007 - Associated Press

Sudan will announce a cease-fire at the start of talks with rebel groups on Oct. 27 aimed at ending the conflict in Darfur, the country's U.N. ambassador said Monday. Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed said the government decided to declare a cease-fire at the opening session to help promote the success of the talks in the Libyan city of Sirte, the hometown of the country's leader Moammar Gadhafi. "On that day ... we will declare a cease-fire so that we can give the negotiators a chance to get out with an agreement on cessation of hostilities and cease-fire in the first round of the talks," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "So this will be a good confidence-building measure when all parties agree to a cease-fire, which we are going to announce on the 27th," Mohamed added. Earlier this month, the U.N. special envoy to Darfur, Jan Eliasson, called on the Sudanese government and rebel factions to begin the peace talks with a cease-fire agreement and urged both sides to make concessions. "Fighting should not be the means for achieving political goals," he said. Past cease-fires in Darfur have been regularly violated and it is doubtful that all rebel groups will sign on to a truce. A key Darfur rebel chief, Abdul Wahid Elnur, has refused to attend talks if they are held in Libya. Khalil Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement is also threatening to boycott unless the U.N. and African Union can persuade the rival Sudan Liberation Army to unite its splinter factions for the negotiations. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in February 2003, accusing it of decades of discrimination. Sudan's government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed a charge it denies. The government signed a peace agreement with one rebel group in May 2006, but other rebel groups refused and many of those groups have since splintered, complicating prospects for a political settlement. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad urged "all relevant rebel elements" to participate in the talks. "Everyone must have a cease-fire immediately when the meeting starts, the government and the rebel side," he said Monday. "Anyone who doesn't participate or does not observe a cease-fire will have to answer to the international community, to the people of Darfur, and to the people of Sudan," Khalilzad said. The peace negotiations will be taking place at a time when the U.N. and the African Union are pressing to deploy a 26,000-strong joint peacekeeping force in Darfur to replace the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force now on the ground. Khalilzad said the United States is "not satisfied" with Sudan's cooperation in making land available for the new troops and with its failure to approve the composition of the AU-U.N. hybrid force. He urged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to approve the force "as quickly as possible," stressing that it is predominantly African as Sudan demanded with more than 90 percent of the ground troops from Africa. Asked whether Sudan has agreed to the hybrid force, Sudan's Mohamed said "largely yes." "We told them ... whatever battalions are ready, send them," he said, rejecting the suggestion that Sudan was somehow obstructing the deployment. Mohamed criticized the U.N.'s decision to award a $250 million contract without competitive bidding to the California company Pacific Architect Engineers, Inc., to build five new camps in Darfur for 4,100 U.N. and AU personnel. U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said last week the complexity of the project and the challenging timeline mandated by the Security Council required a contractor with considerable experience in Darfur. But Mohamed said the contract violates U.N. procedures and rules and Sudan will protest to the General Assembly. "We are not happy, and the whole international community is unhappy about how rules are here dodged on the ground like this to make happy the United S

Sudanese forces shelling Darfur refugee camp

[Moderator's Note: this news report relates to southern Darfur near Nyala, a long way from where Steph is stationed - about 200 miles south as the crow flies (probably considerably further by road). (ST is in Northern Darfur)

Sudanese forces shelling Darfur refugee camp: rebel chief

NAIROBI, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP)

An exiled Darfur rebel chief said on Friday that Sudanese government forces were shelling the largest refugee camp in Darfur. Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, a chief instigator of the Darfur rebellion, said the forces had descended on Kalma camp, 17 kilometres (11 miles) from the South Darfur capital Nyala. "This is happening as we speak. The government of Sudan is using artillery against the people in the camp," Nur told AFP by phone from Paris, where he is exiled. Nur said he had received information about the attack on Kalma, the largest camp in Darfur, from his field commanders. "The strategy is the following: kill, rape, burn, put people in concentration camps. This is the regime's final solution," added Nur, who founded the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) which has since splintered into several factions. Nur, whose military influence has faded in the recent months but is regarded as influential by the Darfur civilian population, called for action to halt the killing in Darfur. "I am calling on the international community to stop the genocide against my people. What is happening is really very sad (and) everybody is turning a blind eye. "We need urgent action and the solution is not going to come from Libya," Nur added. Final settlement talks between Darfur's myriad rebel groups and Khartoum are scheduled to kick off on October 27 in Libya, in a bid to end the conflict that has raged since February 2003. Acccording to the UN at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced in the conflict that has spawned what aid groups describe as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.