| Aid worker shot and
injured in Darfur
An American aid worker was shot in the face on Tuesday in South Darfur,
a state in western Sudan, when unidentified gunmen ambushed her convoy,
the US State Department said. The clearly marked humanitarian vehicle was
attacked between the towns of Nyala and Kass.
"I was deeply saddened to learn that a member of the United States
Agency for International Development's [USAID] Disaster Assistance Response
Team was shot and wounded in Darfur," Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of
state, said in a statement read by spokesman Adam Ereli. "The thoughts
and prayers of all of us at the Department of State and USAID are with
her and her family as she continues to receive treatment."
Jan Pronk, the UN special envoy to Sudan condemned the attack. In a
statement, Pronk said such incidents were unlikely to stop unless a robust
protection force of at least 8,000 troops was deployed in Darfur to protect
both the civilian population and humanitarian workers. The Sudanese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs expressed deep regret over the incident, and "strongly
condemned the unjustifiable attack on the relief convoys and workers of
humanitarian aid in Darfur." [Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46269]
(IRIN, Nairobi, 2005 03 25)
US tries three-for-one
UN resolutions on Sudan
With the UN Security Council deadlocked over key issues in Sudan, the
United States announced it would put forward three separate UN resolutions
to tackle the Darfur crisis.
After weeks of stalemate on potential war crimes trials and sanctions,
the United States is proposing different resolutions on both issues as
well as a third to immediately approve a UN peacekeeping force in Sudan.
"We were unable to come to agreement on an omnibus resolution, so in
our view the only way to proceed ... was to split up the three," US deputy
UN ambassador Anne Patterson told reporters.
"There are still differences that we need to resolve," Patterson said.
Council members agree on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's request
to send more than 10,000 peacekeepers to monitor a north-south peace accord
signed in January that ended 21 years of civil war.
But there are fears that the separate crisis in Sudan's troubled western
Darfur region, where a rebel uprising which started two years ago has led
to an estimated 180,000 dead, could derail the north-south peace.
Despite those concerns, the council has been at loggerheads over where
to hold any trials for suspected war crimes that have been committed in
Darfur as well as whether to impose sanctions on individuals.
Most council members favour referring war crimes suspects to the International
Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the world's first permanent tribunal
for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes.
Yet the administration of US President George W. Bush opposes the ICC
over fears that US citizens could be the target of lawsuits politically
motivated by opposition to US policies.
Council members Algeria, China and Russia have meanwhile come out against
US-proposed sanctions -- a travel ban and assets freeze -- on individuals
suspected of jeopardising the peace and committing human rights abuses.
The stand-off has highlighted the issue of political horse-trading
at the United Nations -- especially since Jan Egeland, the UN's top humanitarian
official, estimated that 10,000 people are dying in Darfur each month.
Rights groups in particular have criticised the United States over
its stance on the ICC, claiming that its position is effectively blocking
attempts to bring the guilty in Darfur to justice.
But Algeria and China have also said they have reservations about an
ICC referral.
"We're very much behind accountability. It's obviously a central part
of our strategy in Sudan," Patterson said, calling the draft resolution
on war crimes a "placeholder" measure.
She said that resolution would put forward the option of ICC referral,
a US proposal for a special war crimes court based in Tanzania, and a Nigerian
suggestion for an African Union-backed court.
"The resolution makes no judgement as to which would be preferable
but simply enables discussions to continue until a decision is reached,"
Patterson said. But the non-ICC measures have been mostly rejected by council
members.
Council diplomats on Tuesday still held out the possibility of counter-proposing
an omnibus resolution to address all three issues this week.
The council has already passed two one-week extensions to the mandate
of the current UN mission in Sudan, which is on the ground to help prepare
the arrival of the UN peacekeeping force. The latest mandate expires on
Thursday.
(A.F.P., United Nations, March 22 2005)
China and Sudan reap benefits from marriage of convenience
The red banners fluttering from a new bridge frame in central Khartoum
trumpet the friendship between China and the much-ostracised Sudanese government.
Most of the workers on the bridge building site are Sudanese, but amid
the dust a few Chinese men in hard hats can be found supervising operations.
Behind the construction site are the Chinese living quarters, oriental
lanterns hanging around the gate - and more Chinese flags.
Inside, Miao Qang and Liang Bin play computer games, joke about the
heat and smoke "Stone Forest" Chinese cigarettes, two members of a growing
Chinese population in Sudan, estimated to be about 5,000.
Since the mid-1990s, China has become a key trading partner for Sudan,
investing about $4bn (£2bn) in the impoverished nation, from bridge
building projects to power plant construction and, most significantly,
oil production.
Crucially for Khartoum, the investment came when western nations would
not touch conflict-ridden Sudan with a "barge-pole", according to one diplomat.
For most of the 16 years since President Omar Hassan al-Bashir seized
power, his government has been treated as a pariah, a stigma that hampered
the Islamic regime's dream of tapping into its oil resources.
Khartoum initially looked to western companies - the reserves were
first explored by Chevron in the 1970s. But the government's reputation
for sponsoring terrorism and human rights abuses put off most companies.
Their reticence was amplified by the fact that many oilfields are in
southern Sudan, a region devastated by a 21-year civil war that ended only
in January. US trade sanctions ensured no American companies invested in
Sudan.
It was only when the government looked east, particularly to China,
that the response was positive. "This was very important because it saved
us in some strategic matters and it brought more income to the country,"
says Gutbi al-Mahdi, a presidential adviser. "For us it is very important
to get oil, because an embargo on oil imports would put the country on
the verge of collapse."
China has not just helped out economically in the eyes of the Sudanese.
For the last nine months, as a crisis in Darfur region was thrust into
the spotlight amid accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the threat
of sanctions has hung over Khartoum.
With the United Nations Security Council divided on what action to
take, China has been key among those opposing harsher action against Sudan.
"If it were not for China's involvement with us, all these punishments
proposed by the American delegation would be passed," Mr Mahdi says. But
diplomats in Khartoum question how far China would stick its neck out for
Sudan, arguing that its role in Africa's largest nation is driven more
by economics than politics.
"It can put a brake on the Security Council, but China also has a special
interest with the US and if the US were to put Sudan on the China/US agenda,
things could change," one diplomat says.
The impact of Chinese investment has been dramatic for Sudan. Campaigners
such as Human Rights Watch, have called on Chinese oil companies to suspend
their operations until human rights improve.
Sudan first began pumping oil in 1999, joining the ranks of oil exporters,
and currently produces about 310,000 barrels a day, a figure it hopes to
rise to 500,000 this year. The development occurred despite accusations
that Khartoum was conducting a scorched-earth policy to clear oilfields
and that oil revenue was enabling the government to buy arms to prosecute
the southern war.
Rebels attacked a 1,506-km pipeline to Port Sudan built by China National
Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) four times during construction. But the work
went on.
"It was an opportunity for them [China]. They were not facing the usual
competition and the Chinese government doesn't have NGOs, human rights
groups lobbying them," a western diplomat says. "It's a marriage of convenience."
CNPC has stakes in six oil blocks, including the two currently producing.
China imports about 6m metric tonnes of Sudanese crude oil, which is less
than 10 per cent of total of the country's needs, according to the Chinese
embassy.
But following the peace deal that ended the southern war and expectations
of increased exploration, China hopes the figure will rise, the embassy
says.
Estimates suggest Sudan has oil reserves of up to 3bn barrels, with
proven reserves of about 631m barrels, and it is now China's third or fourth
largest trading partner in Africa, behind South Africa and Egypt.
(Financial Times, Khartoum, Mar 22 2005, By Andrew
England)
IDPs forced
to move as Khartoum settlement is demolished
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
At least 11,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been forced
to move following the demolition of the Shikan settlement, 18 km north
of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday. They
were now living rough in El Fateh, a desert area north of the capital,
she added.
"From 28 December, the Sudanese authorities began demolishing Shikan,
an area the size of 16 football fields, as part of a re-zoning policy in
Khartoum state," Kirsten Zaat, advocacy officer at the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Khartoum, told IRIN.
"Security forces arrived without advance warning and started to load
IDPs onto trucks," she said. "People [IDPs] were not allowed to bring any
personal belongings, and most arrived in El Fateh with only the clothes
they were wearing."
Abd El Wahab M. Osman, Minister of Physical Planning and Utilities
of Khartoum State was not available for comment but another government
official, who declined to be named, said the destruction was part of a
larger re-planning programme that was meant to provide plots for residents
and bring them vital services such as electricity and water.
More than 13,000 IDPs, displaced by the 21-year-old war that ended
in southern Sudan in January, had found shelter in Shikan, a squatter area
established in the 1980s. Nuba, Majanin, Arab, Shilluk, Dinka, Masalit,
Felata and Khofra were among the ethnic groups in Shikan.
Around 15 percent of the resident IDP population of Shikan was permitted
to stay. The remaining 85 percent were moved to El Fateh, a desert area
38 km north of Omdurman, a city just north of Khartoum.
"At least 300,000 people are living in the El Fateh squatter area,
although the area is in a constant state of flux," Zaat said. "The entire
community is made up of IDPs who have been previously moved from other
IDP camps and squatter areas around Khartoum."
The demolition of Shikan resulted in the destruction of all IDP property
and infrastructure, and included the demolition of a community centre,
Zaat said. It was run by a local women's association and constituted the
only source of primary health care in the area.
Zaat said Sudanese authorities had made no prior preparations to ensure
the desert area of El Fateh was fit for human habitation. There was limited
access to water and food, no health or education services, and no electrical
grid or sanitation system.
The demolition of IDP settlements around Khartoum, which started in
the 1980s, had also forced people to return to southern Sudan. However,
support mechanisms along return routes have been largely absent, while
host communities in south Sudan - who live in some of the poorest conditions
in the world - lacked the means to sustain large numbers of returning IDPs.
Relying on income from casual labour had compounded the problems of
the IDPs in El Fatah, Zaat added. Since their removal from Shikan, they
had been unable to work because the cost of transport to Khartoum was higher
than their potential daily wage.
"When re-planning programmes are implemented, the authorities should
take all measures to minimise the adverse effects of displacement," said
the OCHA officer. "At [a] minimum, IDPs have to be given advance notification
of planned demolitions - and basic services should be put in place in the
areas of destination before the IDPs are moved."
According to OCHA, the total number of IDPs in official camps and squatter
areas around Khartoum in March 2005 was just over two million. Many of
these came from southern Sudan, where the 21-year old conflict displaced
an estimated four million people within Sudan and claimed the lives of
two million others.
The conflict erupted in 1983 when southern-based rebels of the Sudan
People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) took up arms against authorities
based in the north to demand greater autonomy. On 9 January, the SPLM/A
and the Sudanese government signed a comprehensive peace agreement in Nairobi,
Kenya that officially ended the war.
(IRIN, Nairobi,, 21 March 2005)
Chinese NPC vice-chairwoman
meets SPLM vice-chairman
He Luli, vice-chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the National People's
Congress(NPC), met here Monday with Salva Kiir Mayardit, vice chairman
of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.
He is visiting China at the invitation of the Chinese Association for
International Understanding.
(Xinhua, Beijing, Mar 21, 2005)
Annan
reform proposal would create a Human Rights Council
One of the most far-reaching U.N. reforms proposed by Secretary-General
Kofi Annan would create a new Human Rights Council at the top rung of the
world body to replace the much criticized Human Rights Commission.
The 53-member commission, which is currently meeting in Geneva, has
been attacked by Western governments and human rights campaigners for allowing
the worst-offending countries to use their membership to protect one another
from condemnation or to criticize others.
In his sweeping report Sunday to the 191 U.N. member states on U.N.
reform, Annan joined the criticism saying this practice has undermined
the commission's work and created "a credibility deficit ... which casts
a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."
"If the United Nations is to meet the expectations of men and women
everywhere -- and indeed, if the organization is to take the cause of human
rights as seriously as those of security and development -- then member
states should agree to replace the Commission on Human Rights with a smaller
standing Human Rights Council," Annan said.
Under U.N. rules, members of the Human Rights Commission have been
picked by regional groups. Current member states that have been criticized
for abuses include Sudan, China, Cuba, Nepal, Russia and Zimbabwe. A number
of countries with poor human rights records have been on the commission
over the years. Libya has even held the chair.
Annan proposed that members of the Human Rights Council be elected
directly by the General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority, and that "those
elected to the council should undertake to abide by the highest human rights
standards."
"The creation of the council would accord human rights a more authoritative
position, corresponding to the primacy of human rights in the Charter of
the United Nations," Annan said.
The secretary-general said member states should decide whether the
council should be a principal organ of the United Nations, like the Security
Council and the General Assembly, or a subsidiary body of the General Assembly.
Mark Malloch Brown, who is Annan's chief of staff, explained that making
the Human Rights Council a new U.N. organ requires a change in the U.N.
Charter while making it a subsidiary body of the General Assembly does
not.
"The whole idea is that this council will be on a par" with the other
U.N. organs, Malloch Brown said. "Clearly charter change, which would put
them unambiguously on an equal footing, would be the best, but realistically
one may have to go through a slightly less direct, more technical solution."
The report also called for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
Louise Arbour to play a more active role and urged countries to match their
commitment to human rights with resources to strengthen her office.
"Human rights must be incorporated into decision-making and discussion
throughout the work of the organization," it said.
Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch, welcomed
Annan's "bold solutions" and his inclusion of human rights throughout the
report.
As for the proposed Human Rights Council, she said, "We think it's
an extremely good and courageous idea on the part of the secretary-general."
At last week's opening of the Human Rights Commission's six-week session
in Geneva, Arbour said the agency was undertaking reform and should concentrate
on preventing abuses rather than debating whether countries need help to
improve their record or should be shamed into behaving better.
The reforms she mentioned didn't include getting rid of the commission,
but Malloch Brown said such a step was needed.
"I think everybody's recognized ... that it's time for reform or the
risk of losing public support for that commission," Malloch Brown said.
"We believe the environment there is quite open to change."
How is the United Nations going to get all the dictatorships and human
rights abusers in the world to support a new Human Rights Council?
"Well many of them have always argued that they actually believe in
a strong, open human rights system," Malloch Brown said. "Let's challenge
that."
The Human Rights Council is likely to get strong U.S. support.
Paula Dobriansky, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs,
told the commission Thursday that without major reform, "we are allowing
this body to be tarnished and turning our backs on those still fighting
for the freedoms we possess."
(A.P, United Nations, Mar 21, 2005, By Edith M Lederer)
South Sudan-Women battle
for an education
Considered the property of their families, girls struggle against cultural
mores to stay in school.
He watched the girl as she passed by each day, an enigma. It never occurred
to him that she might be going to school, a rarity in southern Sudan. He
decided he had to have her.
So John Benykor paid 20 cows to her family to wed her. Thus began Martha
Yar's lonely struggle for the right to be educated, get a job and live
her own life.
Here in war-torn southern Sudan, women are the property of their fathers,
brothers or husbands. Few go to school, and the only equation most ever
learn is how many cattle they are worth when they are sold as brides.
But by 19, Yar had worked her way through most of primary school, and
dreamed of college. She begged her older brother, her guardian, not to
sell her, but he had his own eye on a bride, and he needed cows to buy
the woman. He beat his sister and threatened to kill her unless she consented
to the marriage.
Yar ran away three times. Finally, Benykor, an uneducated former rebel
soldier, kidnapped her. "I cried. I was kicking," she said. "I was angry
and screaming."
After 21 years of civil war, Sudan's Muslim-dominated government in
the north recently signed a peace deal with the rebels in the largely animist
and Christian south. They now must transform themselves from an armed movement
into a largely autonomous government.
Although many people hope that peace will mean more public services
and economic opportunities, even advocates see little prospect of rapid
change for women, whose plight is due as much to the culture of the region
as to the ravages of war.
With early marriages the norm, only 1% of women in southern Sudan finish
primary school, and 88% are illiterate. More than one in nine die in pregnancy
or childbirth, according to UNICEF.
If raped, they must marry their attackers. If they commit adultery,
they are jailed. They have no right to divorce. If widowed, they are assets
to be inherited by male relatives, like a house or a herd of animals. They
have no ethnic identity of their own, but take their husband's.
Akur Ajuoi, child law reform officer at UNICEF in the town of Rumbek,
runs a program to try to convince tribal chiefs of the benefits of letting
girls finish school. She said the only advantage they saw was that fathers
could charge more cows to marry their daughters. But other than that most
chiefs see no intrinsic value in sending girls to school because they still
oppose letting girls get a higher education, allowing women to take jobs
outside the home, or changing their status as men's property.
"They seem to be very resistant," Ajuoi said. "Women are not allowed
to go out of the households or into public life. They have no public role."
Rose Baaco, program manager for a community improvement program run
by the rebels' social policy arm, believes addressing women's rights is
not a high priority for the new government. It is preoccupied, she said,
with building roads and offices and filling government positions.
"When the [southern] government was setting its priorities, we didn't
hear anything about women and children," Baaco said.
When Yar, now 21, was introduced to her prospective husband, 15 years
her senior, she was horrified, and determined to finish her schooling.
Even when he promised to let her finish school after they got married,
she refused his proposal.
"As a girl I could pursue my education and do many things. But as a
wife I'd be restricted and have to do what my husband said," she said in
an interview. "I really wanted to go to university and study theology and
English."
Yar turned to the school headmaster and teachers to beg their support.
She ran away. She became notorious in Rumbek for the vehemence of her protest,
which was unheard of. Then came the shock of the kidnapping, in December
2002.
After paying Yar's brother the 20 cows, Benykor gathered neighbors,
relatives and friends and arrived at Yar's home after dark. She was in
bed wearing only underpants. They grabbed her and dragged her out.
Yar was locked in Benykor's house for a week. "They put guards there
for seven days to stop me running away," she said.
Several schoolteachers tried to convince her that Benykor was serious
about letting her go back to class. Seeing no way out, she gave up and
accepted him.
After they married, her husband beat her every day, telling her he
was determined to break her stubborn spirit. She felt nothing but hatred,
and contempt for his lack of education.
Refusing to give in, two weeks later she was back at school, taking
her exams.
At Rumbek girls' primary school there are only five girls in the top
class, Grade 8, and few have ever made it to secondary school. One Grade
8 student, Victoria Akon, 18, who wants to become a doctor, said the biggest
topic of conversation among her peers was how to avoid marriage and stay
at school.
"Most of my classmates were forced by their parents into early marriage.
They say they were given no choice, 'but please don't be like us,' " Akon
said. "Girls of southern Sudan want to be educated and they want to be
like other girls in the world, sharing and governing the country."
Martha Yar now has a 16-month-old daughter, Sara. At first Yar wanted
to take the baby to school on her back, but her husband forbade it. After
she spent seven months at home with the infant, her husband found a 5-year-old
niece to look after her child.
By June 2004, Yar was back in Grade 7, struggling to satisfy her husband,
deflect his family's criticisms and quench her own thirst for knowledge.
Her husband wants more children, but she doesn't, fearing it will further
undermine her chances of education. She longs for a divorce, but knows
her family would never agree: That would mean they would have to return
the 20 cows they received.
Some women, in a desperate bid for divorce, commit adultery in the
hopes that will free them from marriage. Many of them end up jailed.
Adomic William, 20, ran off with a man her parents did not approve
of, and got pregnant. Once pregnant, she could not be married off to a
young man, but to give birth out of wedlock would bring shame to the family.
Her parents married her off to an elderly man with three wives.
After giving birth to a son, she ran back to her lover. Her family
cursed her, refusing ever to visit. When her son died of a fever at age
3, her lover abandoned her, leaving her helpless.
William said she committed adultery after her lover left to end her
marriage with the elderly man. Like most southern Sudanese women, she had
no money, and was jailed for not paying the fine of seven cows. After serving
her six-month jail term, she says her only hope is to beg her parents to
let her come home.
"I loved a man and my parents told me to stop that love, and I didn't
accept it. Then my son died, and now I'm left with no son, no husband and
no love. It's all my own fault," she said, sitting on a mat in a bare dirt
yard in Rumbek prison with about two dozen other women, most convicted
of adultery.
Matters such as divorce, rape, adultery, theft and child custody are
decided in tribal courts ruled by uneducated chiefs. Ajuoi, the UNICEF
officer, says women are disadvantaged in these courts, but judges argue
that rapid reform to improve women's rights would so outrage the men it
would be counterproductive.
"It is something we cannot do away with immediately because our society
is somewhat traditional. Girls are seen as a source of wealth, and people
sell their daughters to get wealth," said Deputy Chief Justice Bullen Panchol
of the Court of Appeal in South Sudan.
"The traditions that we have must go through a period of injustice
in a way, and that process must be allowed to evolve. If we rationalize
everything according to international norms, people would be scared," he
added. "They would resist and they would continue to do these things illegally."
Three months ago, Yar's husband stopped her schooling entirely and
told her he would take her to his home village, where there would be just
housework.
"I'm still angry with him, because he broke his promise to let me go
to school. He says, 'If I let you get an education, then maybe you'll look
down on me because I'm not educated, and you'll want to leave me.' I say,
'Now that you're keeping me in the house, you are not educated and I am
not educated. How does it help?'
"Before he married me, I was in school, I was not being beaten and
I had my own life. Now I have lost all those things and I feel terribly
bitter. There is no way I will get my freedom."
She says Benykor does not hit her during the day when neighbors might
see, but waits until night. She no longer screams, because she knows no
one will help.
"He says, 'Until you stop being stubborn, I'll keep on beating you,'
" Yar said. She has no hope that her family will do anything.
"My family have equated my life to 20 cows," she said. "But I insist,
my life is not equal to 20 cows."
(The Los Angeles Times, Rumbek, Sudan, Mar 21, 2005,
By Robyn Dixon,
In Darfur, my camera
was not nearly enough
Our helicopter touched down in a cloud of camel-brown sand, dust and
plastic debris. As the cloud gradually settled into new layers on the bone-dry
desert landscape, we could make out the faces of terrified villagers. "Welcome
to Sudan," I murmured to myself, grabbing my pen and waterproof notebook.
A former Marine, I had arrived in Sudan's Darfur region in September
2004 as one of three U.S. military observers for the African Union, armed
only with a pen, pad and camera. The mandate for the A.U. force allowed
merely for the reporting of violations of a cease-fire that had been declared
last April and the protection of observers. The observers sometimes joked
morbidly that our mission was to search endlessly for the cease-fire we
constantly failed to find. I soon realized that this was no joke.
The conflict had begun nearly 1 1/2 years earlier and had escalated
into a full-scale government-sponsored military operation that, with the
support of Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, was aimed at annihilating
the African tribes in the region. And while the cease-fire was supposed
to have put a stop to that, on an almost daily basis we would be called
to investigate reports of attacks on civilians. We would find men, women
and children tortured and killed, and villages burned to the ground.
The first photograph I took in Darfur was of a tiny child, Mihad Hamid.
She was only a year old when I found her. Her mother had attempted to escape
an onslaught from helicopter gunships and Janjaweed marauders that had
descended upon her village of Alliet in October 2004. Carrying her daughter
in a cloth wrapped around her waist, as is common in Sudan, Mihad's terrified
mother had run from her attackers. But a bullet had rung out through the
dry air, slicing through Mihad's flesh and puncturing her lungs. When I
discovered the child, she was nestled in her mother's lap, wheezing in
a valiant effort to breathe. With watery eyes, her mother lifted Mihad
for me to examine.
Most Sudanese villagers assume that a khawadja -- a foreigner -- must
be a doctor. And my frantic efforts to signal to her to lay her struggling
daughter back down only convinced her that I had medical advice to dispense.
It broke my heart to be able to offer her only a prayer and a glance of
compassion, as I captured this casualty with my camera and notepad. I pledged,
with the linguistic help of our team's Chadian mediator, that we would
alert the aid organizations poised to respond.
"This is what they do," the mediator -- a neutral party to the conflict
-- screamed at me. "This is what happens here! Now you know! Now you see!"
I was unaware at that time that when the aid workers arrived the next day,
amid continued fighting, they would never be able to locate Mihad.
Mihad now represents to me the countless victims of this vicious war,
a war that we documented but given our restricted mandate were unable to
stop. Every day we surveyed evidence of killings: men castrated and left
to bleed to death, huts set on fire with people locked inside, children
with their faces smashed in, men with their ears cut off and eyes plucked
out, and the corpses of people who had been executed with gunshots to the
head. We spoke with thousands of witnesses -- women who had been gang-raped
and families that had lost fathers, people who plainly and soberly gave
us their accounts of the slaughter.
Often we were the witnesses. Just two days after I had taken Mihad's
photo, we returned to Alliet. While talking to a government commander on
the outskirts of the town, we heard a buzz that sounded like a high-voltage
power line. Upon entering the village, we saw that the noise was coming
from flies swarming over dead animals and people. We counted about 20 dead,
many burned, and then flew back to our camp to write our report. But the
smell of charred flesh was hard to wash away.
The conflict in Darfur is not a battle between uniformed combatants,
and it knows no rules of war. Women and children bear the greatest burden.
The Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps are filled with families that
have lost their fathers. Every day, women are sent outside the IDP camps
to seek firewood and water, despite the constant risk of rape at the hands
of the Janjaweed. Should men be available to venture out of the camps,
they risk castration and murder. So families decide that rape is the lesser
evil. It is a crime that families even have to make such a choice. Often
women are sexually assaulted within the supposed safety of the IDP camps.
Nowhere is really safe. If and when the refugees are finally able to return
home and rebuild, many women may have to support themselves alone; rape
victims are frequently ostracized, and others face unwanted pregnancies
and an even greater burden of care.
The Janjaweed militias do not act alone. I have seen clear evidence
that the atrocities committed in Darfur are the direct result of the Sudanese
government's military collaboration with the militias. Attacks are well
coordinated by Sudanese government officials and Arab militias, who attack
villages together. Before these attacks occur, the cell phone systems are
shut down by the government so that villagers cannot warn each other. Whenever
we lost our phone service, we would scramble to identify the impending
threat. We knew that somewhere, another reign of terror was about to begin.
Helicopter gunships belonging to the government routinely support the
Arab militias on the ground. The gunships fire anti-personnel rockets that
contain flashettes, or small nails, each with stabilizing fins on the back
so the point hits the target first. Each gunship contains four rocket pods,
each rocket pod contains about 20 rockets and each rocket contains about
500 of these flashettes. Flashette wounds look like shotgun wounds. I saw
one small child's back that looked as if it had been shredded by a cheese
grater. We got him to a hospital, but we did not expect him to live.
On many of the occasions we tried to investigate these attacks, we
would find that fuel for our helicopters was mysteriously unavailable.
We would receive unconvincing explanations from the Sudanese government's
fuel company -- from "we are out of fuel" to "our fuel pumps are broken."
At the same time, government helicopters continued to strafe villages unimpeded.
Those villagers who were able to escape flocked to existing IDP camps,
where they would scrounge for sticks and plastic bags to construct shelter
from the sun and wind. In even these desperate situations, however, the
Sudanese government would not give up its murderous mission. First it would
announce the need to relocate an IDP camp and assess the population of
displaced people, often grossly underestimating the numbers. Then after
international aid organizations had built a new, smaller camp, the government
would forcibly relocate the population, leaving hundreds to thousands without
shelter. It would bulldoze or drive over the old camps with trucks, often
in the middle of the night in order to escape notice. It would then gather
up and burn the remaining debris.
The worst thing I saw came last December, when Labado, a village of
20,000 people, was burned to the ground. We rushed there after a rebel
group contacted us, and we arrived while the attack was still in progress.
At the edge of the village, I found a Sudanese general who explained why
he was doing nothing to stop the looting and burning. He said his job was
to protect civilians and keep the road open to commercial traffic and denied
that his men were participating in the attack. Then a group of uniformed
men drove by in a Toyota Land Cruiser. The general said they were just
going to get water, but they stopped about 75 yards away, jumped out, looted
a hut and burned it. The attacks continued for a week. We have no idea
how many people died there but tribal leaders later said close to 100 were
missing.
Since I left Darfur last month, I have tried, in press conferences,
newspaper interviews and congressional testimony, to publicize conditions
there in the hope that the international community will intervene more
vigorously instead of watching the atrocities run their course. That way
we won't look back years from now and ask why we didn't stop another genocide.
I believe this conflict can be resolved through international pressure
and international support of the African Union. Weapons sanctions and a
no-fly zone throughout Darfur are critical. I have seen that the mere presence
of A.U. forces can discourage attacks and, with more support, they could
stop the conflict.
In December, the Sudanese general at Labado had told us that his mission
was to continue clearing the route all the way to Khartoum, hundreds of
miles away. The next town in line was Muhajeryia, roughly twice the size
of Labado. The African Union placed 35 soldiers into Muhajeryia, not to
protect the village, but to protect the civilian contractors who were establishing
a base camp. Yet this small force alone was able to deter the government
of Sudan, with a force of a few thousand soldiers and Janjaweed militiamen,
from attacking. Shortly after that, the A.U. was able to deploy 70 more
soldiers from the protection force and 10 military observers to the scorched
village of Labado. Within one week, approximately 3,000 people returned
to rebuild. In addition, the A.U. negotiated the withdrawal of Sudanese
government troops from the area.
To secure and protect all villages in Darfur, the African Union needs
several things: an expanded mandate that would allow it to protect civilians
and ensure secure routes for humanitarian aid, advanced logistics and communication
support, and an increase in the size of the protection force by tens of
thousands.
The attention paid to Darfur in Congress and at the United Nations
hasn't been enough. For the first time, we might be able to stop genocide
in the making. We must not fail the men, women and children of Darfur.
During my time in Darfur, as I listened to the victims, I was astounded
at their composure. Their unwavering faith provides some rationale to what
seems to me an inexplicable horror. By handing over their lives to God,
somehow each day is a gift, despite the massacres. "We're going to die,"
they acknowledge with fear, "but we hope to survive . . . Inshallah [God
willing]." Unfortunately, they just don't have a choice.
We do.
Author's e-mail: steidlebs@globalgrassrootsnetwork.org
Brian Steidle, who served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, recently
spent six months working for a State Department contractor as a cease-fire
monitor with the African Union force in Sudan's Darfur region. His sister,
Gretchen Steidle Wallace, assisted in the writing of this piece.
(The Washington Post Mar 20, 200, By Brian Steidle)
Sudan criticizes
aid agencies over Darfur aid money
Sudan has accused humanitarian agencies operating in the war-torn region
of Darfur of using only a fraction of funds from donors on the crisis and
retaining much of it for their own activities, the independent al-Sahafa
daily reported Sunday.
The paper quoted the governor of South Darfur state, Al-Hajj Atta al-Mannan,
as saying that just over 10 percent of the total amount of financial assistance
donated for the crisis in Darfur had reached the needy.
He claimed that the majority of the money was used to fund activities
not related directly to the plight of the people of Darfur.
"The share of the people of Darfur from this fund was only 12 percent
while the remainder was spent on administrative operations and workers
of the international organisations in Darfur," Mannan charged.
The charges are the latest by Khartoum against international humanitarian
organisations in the Darfur region, where the United Nations says some
180,000 people have died in the past 18 months, mainly from disease and
malnutrition.
Earlier this year, Sudanese authorities arrested five aid officials
employed by the Kirkens Noedhjelp (Norwegian Church Aid) humanitarian organization
and accused them of filming a documentary inside rebel camps to back up
allegations of genocide and rape in the west Sudanese province.
In October, Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir launched an attack on
aid agencies in the region, calling them enemies.
"Organizations operating in Darfur are the real enemies," the president
was quoted as saying.
And earlier in May, Sudanese Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Hussein
accused a number of aid organizations of supporting ethnic minority rebels
in the region.
He claimed that they "used humanitarian operations as a cover for carrying
out a hidden agenda and proved to have supported the rebellion in the past
period."
Beshir and other officials in Khartoum have repeatedly accused international
humanitarian organizations of proselytising in Sudan and charged that the
West was fueling the conflict in a bid to plunder the country's resources.
An estimated 9,000 aid workers operate in Darfur, which has been torn
by civil war and one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world for
the past two years.
The UN fed a record 1.6 million people in the region in February in
spite of increased attacks, according to the World Food Programme.
(A.F.P., Khartoum, March 20 2005)
UN urges
larger African peacekeeping force for Darfur
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
An 8,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force with an enhanced
mandate would be needed to protect the nearly two million displaced people
in the western Sudanese region of Darfur and bring stability to the volatile
area, a UN spokesperson said on Friday.
"Jan Pronk [the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the
Sudan] felt that, for the AU [African Union] to strengthen its role in
Darfur, it would need to expand its capacity to 8,000 troops and adopt
a mandate with a stronger focus on protection," Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman
for the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN.
"When you look at their [the AU] experience on the ground, whenever
they were there, such as in Labado [a town in South Darfur which suffered
some of the worst fighting in recent months], the situation stabilised,"
Achouri added.
An AU-led assessment team, consisting of senior AU, UN, EU (European
Union) and US officials, arrived in Addis Ababa on Friday, having completed
a week-long assessment of peacekeeping requirements in Darfur. The team
was expected to finalise its joint report over the next few days.
"The assessment team looked with satisfaction at the situation in local
communities in which the AU was present," Nourreddine Mezni, spokesman
of the AU in Khartoum told IRIN on Friday, adding that the AU presence
had encouraged local communities and internally displaced persons to resume
their normal life activities.
A preliminary observation by the assessment team, Mezni noted, was
that, given the current AU troop strength of 2,193 soldiers, the mission
was doing the utmost within the possib |
