Peace & Peacekeeping in Darfur

DARFUR,
The flawed Abuja peace deal of May 5th, 2006 between the government of the Sudan and the faction of Minni Minawi was conspicuously an asset to the perpetuation of crimes against civilian population in Darfur. On May 15th, Khartoum regime and its militia wing the janjawids relentlessly attacked 2 villages in the north Darfur, raping dozens of women in Meawashie, wounding 6 and killing many, leaving a message behind, as said by a villager, that “ you are slaves, we will finish you..” In Shearia the toll was enormous.
The regime that struck a deal in Abuja to abstain from assaulting civilians could not endure long before the resumption of the business as usual. It was not novel, at least, for one of the refugees in Gaga camp in Chad who learned the pattern of al-Bashir evil will “We know Omar al-Bashir. We have seen him make agreements and then break them 10 minutes later.” Read more >>>

GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: Intro -- It's Hardly a World Away

"The conflict between the Government of Sudan and two rebel groups that began in 2003 has precipitated the worst humanitarian and human rights crisis in the world today. The primary clevage is ethnic: Arabs (GOS and militia forces) vs. non-Arab villagers belonging primarily to the Zaghawa, Massalit, and Fur ethnic groups. Both groups are predominantly Muslim." Read more >>>

Sudan govt forces attack Darfur rebel bases-sources

By Opheera McDoom

(Reuters) - Sudanese government forces and allied militias attacked bases of a new rebel alliance in Darfur despite a ceasefire in the violent west, officials and rebels said on Saturday.

An unpopular African Union-mediated peace deal was signed in May by only one of three rebel negotiating factions. Many leaders who did not sign formed a new group called the National Redemption Front (NRF), which began military operations earlier this month in the Kordofan area neighbouring Darfur.

"Yesterday (Friday) all day and until the evening the government of Sudan with the Janjaweed attacked Jabel Moun and Kulkul, north of el-Fasher," Abu Bakr Hamid al-Nur, a rebel NRF commander, told Reuters from Darfur on Saturday. Read more >>>

Darfur Rebel Faction Fighting Spreads

Darfur Rebel Faction Fighting Spreads, Fuels Ethnic Violence

July 27 (Bloomberg) -- Spreading clashes between rebel factions in Sudan's western region of Darfur are threatening to unleash an ethnic conflict, United Nations officials, African Union officers and refugees said.

Forces loyal to rebel leader Minni Minnawi in the past month have overrun North Darfur villages inhabited by the Fur people, Darfur's largest ethnic group, which mainly supports a rival rebel faction headed by Abdel Wahid Mohamed el-Nur.

Minnawi, from the minority Zaghawa tribe, in a telephone interview yesterday, said he told President George W. Bush at a July 25 meeting in Washington that his troops weren't attacking civilians. Minnawi and the Sudanese government in May signed a peace agreement that was rejected by Nur's faction in the Sudan Liberation Army. Read more >>>

Sudan: Confronting the Atrocities in Darfur

By: Nick Grono

Darfur's ongoing misery is the world's continuing shame. The international community has conspicuously failed in its responsibility to protect the people of Darfur from large scale crimes against humanity: the result is over 200,000 dead and more than two million forced from their homes.

But one notable exception to this international abdication of responsibility has been on the legal front, with the UN Security Council's referral of Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2005. In the face of clear evidence of ethnic cleansing and other atrocity crimes, the ICC investigation has taken on enormous importance. It is also a critical test of the fledgling organisation.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, faces three big challenges. The first is that Darfur is in the middle of a continuing conflict, making it extraordinarily difficult to conduct a successful investigation and prosecutions. The government and its proxy Janjaweed militias continue to launch attacks on the rebels and their civilian sympathisers in western Sudan and in neighbouring Chad, and the rebels are not only fighting them, but also each other. The Prosecutor does not even have a security force to protect his staff and witnesses on the ground let alone help him collect evidence. Read more >>>

Darfur: Patients double at health clinic

The health clinic in Garsila is finding it hard to cope with an influx of patients. There are not enough staff and not enough drugs to treat the sick.

By Charlotte Brudenell, ACT/Caritas

Garsila, West Darfur, July 25, 2006-Deba primary health care clinic, run by ACT/Caritas, is now the only place in Garsila where people can access free health care.

At eight in the morning, quiet queues trace along the clinic's two buildings and more people gather under the awning that spans between them. Women in colourful tobs with babies in their arms and children by their sides, and men and boys dressed in white all sit patiently waiting for the clinic to open. The clinic offers medical consultations, immunisations, mother and child healthcare, first aid and a short stay ward. Read more >>>

Sudan: Nowhere is safe

By Charlotte Brudenell, ACT-Caritas

Nyala, Darfur, July 25, 2006 - People living in camps in South Darfur continue to live in fear. "We came here to be protected but we are not safe," is the resounding echo from a group of sheikhs. "There are bandits and armed groups both inside and outside the camps."

Men dare not leave the camps for fear of being killed, and women are afraid that if they leave the camps to collect firewood they run the risk of being attacked by armed militias. Read more >>>

World must not turn away from Darfur's desperation

By Mia Farrow

Fatima was just minutes old and already the flies had found her. She and her young mother lay on a cot in a small bare room without a window or door. The floor was unpaved but swept clean. It is one of two rooms in this tiny clinic where there is no operating room, few instruments and no medicine. "They would be stolen," explained the doctor.

Fatima entered this world on June 12 in Zam Zam refugee camp in Sudan's North Darfur region, where there is one doctor for 40,000 people. Read more >>>

U.S. must keep pushing for peace in Darfur

As rebel leaders sit at the Green Village Hotel in Khartoum, the prospect of peace in the Darfur region of Sudan suddenly becomes tangible. Looking slightly uncomfortable in suits and ties, they are discussing development plans for Darfur and a scheduled meeting between their leader, Minni Minnawi, and President Bush.

But reports from Darfur give a different impression. In the large camps housing many of the 2.2 million people displaced by the civil war, violence has increased since the May 5 signing of the Darfur peace agreement. The number of people the World Food Program can't reach because of lack of security jumped to 350,000 in June from an average of 150,000 in April and May. Looting, fighting among tribes and attacks against relief workers and African Union peacekeepers all have increased. Read more >>>

Janjaweed 'must be disarmed'

Zam Zam - Almost three months after a partial peace deal was signed, hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians in Darfur remained unwilling to go home until the Sudanese government's Janjaweed proxy militia had been disarmed.

A committee of elders representing the 43 000 people crammed into Zam Zam camp in North Darfur state headed to a routine meeting with an official from the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS). Read more >>>

Genocide in DarfurIt's getting worse

A peace pact agreed to in May by the Sudanese government and a main rebel group offered hope for ending the three-year-old genocide in Sudan's western region of Darfur.

How quickly hope dies.

The pact is being buried under rising violence in the African nations of Sudan and Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees languish.

Since 2003, attacks by fighters known as the Janjaweed have killed an estimated 200,000 civilians and displaced three million within Sudan and in neighboring Chad. In the last year, rebels have begun fighting among themselves, and Sudan and Chad have skirmished with each other.

The situation is more than a mess. It's the 21st century's first genocide, spinning further out of control. Read the full editorial >>>

Darfur Needs UN Troops

President Bush on Friday called on the government of the Sudan to approve an urgently needed United Nations peacekeeping force for Darfur. Continued international pressure of this sort is clearly needed. If the Sudan continues to balk at the proposed U.N. mission, it will be impossible to end the humanitarian tragedy in Darfur. In that case, the blame must fall equally on a genocidal Sudanese leadership and the cynical decision of China to prevent the international community from holding that leadership responsible through United Nations sanctions. Read more >>>

Despite the Darfur Peace Agreement, Death and Displacement in Darfur

Refugees International

"What was written in the Darfur Peace Agreement is just paperwork," says a local leader of the Masalit tribe in Gereida in South Darfur. "After the signing, attacks have increased." Officials in Gereida, one of Darfur's largest concentrations of displaced people, report almost nightly attacks in the area by mounted forces known as the Janjaweed, a government-supported Arab militia. Read more >>>

World powers press Sudan on Darfur U.N. force

By Ingrid Melander

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Sudan resisted world powers' pressure on Tuesday to accept a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur to replace an African Union force that has been unable to stem violence that Washington calls genocide.

But after a donors' conference in Brussels involving the United Nations, the United States and Sudan, the EU's foreign policy chief expressed hope that Khartoum might be closer to accepting a U.N. peace force. Read more >>>

Darfur peace signatories accused of rape, murder

Fighters of the largest Darfur rebel faction, which signed a May peace deal for the western Sudanese region, stand accused of raping and murdering civilians in an offensive against rebel holdouts, the UN reported last week.

Some 4,000 civilians have fled the fighting between the rival factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement in the Tawila area of North Darfur state, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a situation report.
Some 650 displaced people, most of them women and children, arrived in the Zam Zam camp alone, the report said, citing the African Union peacekeeping mission in the region.
The displaced were all members of the Fur ethnic group -- the region’s largest -- which provides much of the support for the holdout SLM faction of Abdelwahid al-Nour. Read more >>>

Peace & Peacekeeping in Darfur

DARFUR, -- The flawed Abuja peace deal of May 5th, 2006 between the government of the Sudan and the faction of Minni Minawi was conspicuously an asset to the perpetuation of crimes against civilian population in Darfur. On May 15th, Khartoum regime and its militia wing the janjawids relentlessly attacked 2 villages in the north Darfur, raping dozens of women in Meawashie, wounding 6 and killing many, leaving a message behind, as said by a villager, that “ you are slaves, we will finish you..” In Shearia the toll was enormous.
The regime that struck a deal in Abuja to abstain from assaulting civilians could not endure long before the resumption of the business as usual. It was not novel, at least, for one of the refugees in Gaga camp in Chad who learned the pattern of al-Bashir evil will “We know Omar al-Bashir. We have seen him make agreements and then break them 10 minutes later.” The awareness of the insecurity for civilians is increasingly reinforced by the inability/unwillingness of AU to protect them, regime’s policy of sustaining the attacks unquestioned and international community of flirting with those who commit war crimes and crimes against with total impunity. Read more >>>

Killing civilians

By Milton J. Valencia TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The change follows growing pressure over genocide plaguing the Darfur region of the African country, discrediting the government in what has become a humanitarian crisis of Arabs killing Africans, nomad against farmer, Mr. Doucot said. The government says it is killing terrorists, or rebels.


But “all evidence shows they’re killing civilians,” said Mr. Doucot, who has visited the country twice, but cannot return after fleeing government arrest in his last trip. The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory in February warning U.S. residents against all travel to Sudan. Read more >>>

Darfur Security in Freefall: Humanitarian Collapse May Occur Any Moment

Minni Minawi faction of SLA now actively coordinating with Khartoum’s military forces in North Darfur
Eric Reeves

The multiples failures of the African Union mission in Darfur have for the past week been spectacularly on display, even as the security challenges in protecting civilians and humanitarian operations grow daily greater. The AU has virtually collapsed as an effective force in much of Darfur, almost on the eve of a donors’ conference in Brussels that is supposed to determine how to sustain AU operations---financially and politically.
Despite the tactful commendations of AU efforts that have in the past come from various quarters, the widely understood truth is that this desperately under-manned and under-equipped force is failing in ever more significant ways. It is demoralized, fearful, and attempting less and less in the way of civilian protection. At the same time, the AU leadership is shamefully refusing to speak publicly about the widening violence in North Darfur, which increasingly involves military cooperation between the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction of Minni Minawi and Khartoum’s regular forces. Read the entire article >>>

In Darfur, peace deal has had little effect

By Shashank Bengali

KASSAB, Sudan -- Don't ask Ibrahim Rahma about the peace agreement for Darfur. Where he sits, in this camp where thousands displaced by the war in western Sudan now live in tumbledown wooden shacks, there is no peace.

Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Here, the 38-year-old sheik said, stick-legged children still subsist on rationed food, and the water wells often run dry. Armed men still terrorize people. Two nights earlier, gunshots rang out in the nearby hills. Read more >>>

Where is the African Union in Darfur?

By Julie Flint, the Daily Star

July 12, 2006 — An attack on the North Darfur village of Bir Maza last weekend bore all the hallmarks of the war the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias have waged for the past three years against the Darfur rebel movements and the civilians accused of supporting them: a ground offensive by regular and militia forces, aerial support from helicopter gunships, murder, and rape. But the government’s partner in crime in Bir Maza was not the Janjaweed. It was Khartoum’s new partner in peace - the faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Minni Minawi. Read more >>>

Darfur rebels accused of rape and murder

Khartoum - Fighters of the largest Darfur rebel faction, which signed a May peace deal for the western Sudanese region, stand accused of raping and murdering civilians in an offensive against rebel holdouts, the United Nations reported on Sunday.

Four thousand civilians have fled the fighting between the rival factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement in the Tawila area of North Darfur state, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a situation report.

More than 650 displaced people, most of them women and children, arrived in the Zam Zam camp alone, the report said, citing the African Union peacekeeping mission in the region. Read more >>>

UN accuses Minnawi faction of rape, murder in Darfur

Khartoum, Sudan, 07/11 - The United Nations Sunday accused fighters of the former main rebel group in the western Darfur region of raping and murdering civilians in fighting against rebel factions that rejected a recent peace deal.

"Some 4,000 civilians have fled the fighting between the rival factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement in the Tawila area of North Darfur state," the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said in a situation report released here after the fighting erupted again in Darfur recently.

Khartoum and the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) of Minani Minnawi signed the peace agreement 5 May 2006 in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, under the auspices of the African Union (AU). Read more >>>

Pact for peace already on life support

BY SHASHANK BENGALI

KASSAB, Sudan - Don't ask Ibrahim Rahma about the peace agreement for Darfur. Where he sits, in this camp where thousands displaced by the war in western Sudan now live in tumbledown wooden shacks, there is no peace.

Here, the 38-year-old sheik said, stick-legged children still subsist on rationed food, and the water wells often run dry. Armed men still terrorize people. Two nights earlier, gunshots rang out in the nearby hills.

''You cannot just say there is peace. You have to see it,'' said Rahma, seated under a billowing gum tree surrounded by two dozen other weary-faced sheiks. Read more >>>

Call for UN intervention - with or without Sudan's consent

AU to pull out of Darfur 30 Sept: Aegis calls for UN intervention - with or without Sudan's consent
7 July 06 - Because World leaders cannot make a decision on Darfur, the little protection there is for civilians in this western region of Sudan will be gone in three months.

Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, Head of the African Union Mission in Darfur, confirmed yesterday that contrary to widespread media reports, the AU will pull its troops out of Darfur on 30 September unless Sudan gives its consent for a transition to a UN force.

"The African Union Peace and Security Council did take a decision that the mandate of the African Union forces would be ended on the 30th of September,” he stated in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute, London. “There is no change to that date.” Read more >>>

ICC inquiries jeopardized

Chief prosecutor warns that lack of protection discourages people from taking part in ICC investigations.

By Katy Glassborow in The Hague


The International Criminal Court (ICC) faces a big challenge protecting individual victims and witnesses of war crimes who are working with the court.

Issues surrounding the security of victims and witnesses recently dealt a serious blow to investigations into two of the three situations being dealt with by the court - Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

On 14 June 2006 the ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told the United Nations Security Council that the absence of a “functioning and sustainable system” for victim and witness protection prohibits an “effective investigation inside Darfur.”

He added that the lack of protection is a “strong disincentive” to those who would otherwise come forward to participate in investigations for the ICC, and that “in addition to a moral duty, my office is under a legal obligation to protect victims and witnesses.” Read more >>>

In Darfur, little has changed since peace deal

By Shashank Bengali

KASSAB, Sudan - Don't ask Ibrahim Rahma about the peace agreement for Darfur. Where he sits, in this camp where thousands displaced by the war in western Sudan now live in tumbledown wooden shacks, there is no peace.

Here, the 38-year-old sheik said, stick-legged children still subsist on rationed food, and the water wells often run dry. Armed men still terrorize people. Two nights earlier, gunshots rang out in the nearby hills.

"You cannot just say there is peace. You have to see it," said Rahma, seated under a billowing gum tree surrounded by two dozen other weary-faced sheiks. Read more >>>

Act on Darfur

Louisville Courier-Journal


The African Union wants "African solutions to African problems." Trouble is, the 53-member body hasn't been able to come up with an answer to Darfur.

Two million people have fled their homes and at least 180,000 have been killed since the Sudanese government unleashed the janjaweed militia on rebel forces and ethnic groups in the region.


The conflict showed signs of abating in May, when the government and rebels signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement. But in months since, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has blocked the peace process at every turn. Meanwhile, the African Union's meager Darfur peacekeeping unit of 7,000 has struggled to enforce the cease-fire. Read the full editorial >>>

Darfur violence worse since peace deal - UN envoy

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The top U.N. envoy in Sudan on Thursday said violence in Darfur had escalated after a May peace deal and violations of the accord had been ignored.

U.N. special envoy Jan Pronk also renewed his call for additions to the May 5 agreement, such as international security guarantees and greater compensation for war victims, despite recent objections from the Sudanese Foreign Ministry.

"You can compare this situation ... I would say to March, February, before we had the peace agreement," Pronk told a news conference, referring to violence in Darfur in Sudan's west. "It's not dying out, it's increasing at the moment," he added. Read more >>>

Remember Darfur, anyone?

We must not allow the slaughter in Sudan to fall off the radar.

It has been suggested on this blog that we have had too much about Iraq, too much about Israel and too much attacking Bush and Blair. Well here is a blog post that is not about any of them, yet is a major international issue.

It is a country with substantial oil reserves that has a genocide problem, a genocide problem that isn't going away and is not being addressed. The crisis has overrun its borders, causing instability in neighbouring countries and hundreds of thousands of people have died whilst the government has either taken part or turned a blind eye.

The international community is fully informed, in particular the permanent five of the UN security council. It was the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, that used the word "genocide", and they often refuse to use that word in case it requires action. (Rwanda is the prime example of semantics at the state department leading to inaction at the UN.) Read the full article >>>

Deploy now in Darfur

Two months have passed since a peace agreement was signed by the Sudanese government and one of the three rebel groups it is fighting in Darfur. Yet the genocide grinds on, and there is no agreement on the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers needed to save Darfur's two million refugees from slaughter, starvation and disease.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and unsuccessfully urged him to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Al-Bashir categorically rejected Annan's plea, arguing that allowing U.N. forces into Sudan would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.

Given Africa's troubled colonial history, Bashir's resistance might be understandable if he weren't the leader of a murderous regime responsible for the deaths of up to 300,000 non-Arab Darfuris since 2003. Another 2 million have been driven from their homes, tortured, harassed and raped by the government-supported Arab militias known as janjaweed. Read the entire editorial >>>

SUDAN: Violence worsens in Darfur IDP camp

NAIROBI, 4 July (IRIN) - Violent attacks have increased in the largest camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the troubled western Sudanese Darfur region, according to observers.

In Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, an analyst said the security situation in nearby Kalma camp had worsened since the signing of the Darfur peace deal on 5 May, adding that the worst attacks were taking place at night. Read more >>>

Sudan peace deal 'could collapse'

By Jonah Fisher
BBC News, Khartoum

The Sudanese government has rejected calls for changes to be made to the Darfur peace agreement.

Foreign Minister Lam Akol said there was no question of additions or alterations to the deal signed in Nigeria two months ago.

So far the agreement has failed to win the support of people in Darfur and fighting has continued. Read more >>>

UN envoy attacks Darfur agreement

Most of the Darfur camps do not support the peace deal
The head of the United Nations mission in Sudan, Jan Pronk, has said the Darfur peace agreement is in danger of collapse and needs re-writing.
Writing his weblog, Mr Pronk called for security guarantees, more disarmament, and more compensation for victims.

He said the pact does not resonate with the people of Darfur, describing it as "severely paralysed".

Only one of Darfur's rebel groups has signed the deal, and many displaced people in the region reject it. Read more >>>

Backtracking in Darfur

Sudan's dictator gets nastier.


THIS YEAR, Sudan's government declared that it would allow United Nations peacekeepers into the western region of Darfur once a peace deal had been concluded. Then a peace deal was signed in May, and the government reversed itself. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir recently swore that "there will not be any international military intervention in Darfur as long as I am in power." The full editorial >>>