Darfur Peace and Development

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UN Security Council: Sudan must on Darfur in 30 days or face measures

Friday, July 30th, 2004

Sudan

UN News Centre 30 July 2004 Sudan must act on Darfur in 30 days or face measures, Security Council warns 30 July 2004 – The Security Council today adopted a resolution paving the way for action against Sudan in 30 days if it does not make progress on pledges to disarm the militias accused of indiscriminate murders, rapes and other attacks against civilians in the Darfur region – a move that was welcomed immediately by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. With China and Pakistan abstaining, and the other 13 members approving the text, the Council agreed to impose an arms embargo against the Janjaweed militias and all other non-governmental forces in Darfur, which has been described as the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The resolution says the Council might take measures against Sudan if it does not show progress on achieving the commitments – most notably the pledges to disarm the Janjaweed and restore security to Darfur – it outlined in a joint communiqué with the UN on 3 July. Those measures include steps allowed under the UN Charter, such as issuing economic penalties, restricting transport and communications, and severing diplomatic relations. The resolution also calls for the resumption of political dialogue between the government and Darfur’s two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Mr. Annan, who visited Darfur earlier this month and was present at the signing of the communiqué, “looks forward to the swift and sustained implementation” by Sudan of its commitments, and hopes the resolution will ensure that a humanitarian catastrophe is avoided in Darfur, according to a statement read out by UN spokesperson Marie Okabe. The Secretary-General also welcomed the Council’s backing of the efforts of the African Union (AU), which is trying to mediate a political solution to the crisis and has deployed human rights monitors as part of a mission in Darfur, a region roughly equal to the size of France. In Accra, Ghana, African leaders said they discussed plans to significantly expand the number of troops in the AU’s observer mission given the deteriorating security situation in Darfur. They also called on the international community to give financial and logistic support to that mission. Ambassador John Danforth of the United States, one of the sponsors of today’s resolution, said the Council had been forced to act because Government forces and the Janjaweed, which are allied to Khartoum, had killed 30,000 people since February last year. “The last thing we wanted to do was lay the groundwork for sanctions, but the Government of Sudan has left us no choice,” he told the Council after it voted, calling the resolution essential to global efforts to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Humanitarian agencies estimate that 1.2 million people have become internally displaced within Darfur and another 200,000 live as refugees in neighbouring Chad because of the Janjaweed attacks and the fighting between Sudanese forces and the SLM/A and the JEM. Sudan’s Ambassador Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa told the Council his Government was in a “race with time” to implement the commitments laid out in the 3 July communiqué, adding it was extremely difficult to disarm the Janjaweed because Darfur is a region where almost everyone carries arms. Mr. Erwa said Khartoum had already made much progress, citing the deployment of more than 4,800 police to bolster security, the arrest and trial of 200 Janjaweed members, and the dispatch of rape investigation teams headed by female judges. Accusing the United States of pre-determining the facts, he said that when the joint communiqué with the UN was signed, it never occurred to Sudan that it would be used “as a springboard” to punish Khartoum. Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, announcing his country’s abstention before the role, said the adoption of mandatory measures if commitments are not met is “not helpful in resolving the situation in Darfur and may further complicate the situation.” Mr. Wang stressed the importance of listening to and supporting the AU as it attempted to resolve the Darfur dispute.

UN Security Council 30/07/2004 Press Release SC/8160 Security Council 5015th Meeting (AM) SECURITY COUNCIL DEMANDS SUDAN DISARM MILITIAS IN DARFUR, ADOPTING RESOLUTION 1556 (2004) BY VOTE OF 13–0–2 Requests Report in 30 Days on Progress, With Intention to Take Further Action in Event of Non-Compliance The Security Council today, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, demanded that the Government of the Sudan disarm the Janjaweed militias, apprehend and bring to justice its leaders and their associates who had incited and carried out violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as other atrocities in the country’s Darfur region. Adopting resolution 1556 (2004) by 13 votes in favour to none against, with 2 abstentions (China, Pakistan), the Council further requested the Secretary-General to report in 30 days, and monthly thereafter, on the Government’s progress or otherwise on that matter and expressed its intention to consider further actions, including measures under Article 41 of the United Nations Charter, in the event of non-compliance. [According to Article 41, the Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, including complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.] It called on the Government to fulfil immediately all the commitments made in the joint communiqué issued by itself and the Secretary-General on 3 July 2004, particularly by facilitating international relief for the humanitarian disaster by means of a moratorium on all restrictions that might hinder the provision of assistance and access to the affected populations. The Government would also advance the independent investigation, in cooperation with the United Nations, of human rights violations and international humanitarian law; establish credible security conditions for the protection of the civilian population and humanitarian actors; and resume political talks with dissident groups from Darfur, specifically the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLM/A). The Council decided that all States would take the necessary measures to prevent the sale or supply to all non-governmental entities and individuals, including the Janjaweed, operating in North, South and West Darfur by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft and related materials of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment and spare parts, whether or not originating in their territories. However, the Council decided, those measures would not apply to supplies and related technical training and assistance to monitoring, verification or peace support operations; supplies of non-lethal military equipment intended solely for humanitarian and human rights monitoring or protective use; and protective clothing, including flak jackets and military helmets, for the personal use of United Nations personnel, human rights monitors, media representatives, as well as development workers and associated personnel. Endorsing the deployment of international monitors, under the leadership of the African Union, to Darfur, the Council urged the international community to support those efforts. It welcomed the progress made in deploying monitors, and stressed the need for the Government of Sudan and all involved parties to facilitate their work in accordance with the N’Djamena Ceasefire Agreement of 8 April 2004, and with the Addis Ababa agreement of 28 May 2004 on the modalities of establishing an observer mission to monitor the ceasefire. The Council urged Member States to reinforce the international monitoring team by providing personnel and other assistance, including financing, supplies, transport, vehicles, command support, communications and headquarters support. It welcomed the contributions already made by the European Union and the United States to support the African Union-led operation. Urging the parties to the N’Djamena Ceasefire Agreement to conclude a political agreement without delay, the Council noted with regret the failure of senior rebel leaders to participate in the 15 July talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, describing it as unhelpful to the process. It called for renewed talks under the leadership of the African Union and its chief mediator, Hamid Algabid, to reach a political solution to the tensions in Darfur. In addition, the Council strongly urged rebel groups to respect the ceasefire, end the violence immediately and act in a positive and constructive manner to end the conflict. Reiterating its support for the Naivasha Agreement signed by the Government of the Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the Council looked forwards to its effective implementation and a peaceful, unified Sudan working in harmony with all other States for development. Statements were made by the representatives of China, United States, United Kingdom, Algeria (also on behalf of Angola and Benin), Russian Federation, Germany, Spain, Brazil, France, Pakistan, Chile, Philippines and Romania. In response to the text’s adoption, the representative of the Sudan said that as of yesterday, 4,812 police officers had been deployed in Darfur and 200 members of the Janjaweed militias had been arrested. Some of them had been sentenced to death. The Government had dispatched a high-level delegation to negotiate without preconditions, but the talks had collapsed, because the rebels had insisted on preconditions. When the Government had signed the joint communiqué, it had not thought that it would be used to punish the Sudan, regardless of whether it had implemented its commitments. The Government was fully aware that some activists in the United States administration had worked to foster the rebellion. He said that the consultations on the resolution had shown a division in the Council between those members that wished to allow adequate time for the African Union’s efforts and those insisting on adopting the resolution irrespective of the decision taken by African leaders. To the latter group, the resolution had become an end in itself. It had been determined in the United States Congress, before it had been discussed in the Council. That Congress had decided that genocide and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Darfur, contrary to the judgement of the African Union Summit. The meeting convened at 11:13 a.m. and adjourned at 12:40 p.m. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sc8160.doc.htm.

NYT 3 Aug 2004 Evicted From Camp, Sudan Refugees Suffer in Limbo By MARC LACEY EL FASHER, Sudan, Aug. 2 – Aid workers call them “Kofi Annan’s group.” When Mr. Annan, the United Nations secretary general, pulled up at the dismal Meshtel refugee camp during a visit to Darfur on the afternoon of July 1, to his surprise every last person was gone. “Where are the people?” he was heard to ask. A month later, he and other dignitaries have come and gone, but some 1,500 people from Meshtel remain in limbo. They were sent to another camp, Abushouk, but have not been completely welcomed and live a few degrees of destitution below the rest of the 50,000 displaced people there. The new residents have yet to be formally registered, despite a month of waiting. That means they have not been entitled to plastic sheeting, free blankets or food rations from aid agencies, no matter what tragedies they may have endured. Among the others in Abushouk, these down-and-out people are referred to with the same Arabic word given to used clothes. The nickname, Abu Janguer, comes from their hovels, many of which feature garments as roofs. “We feel awful when they call us that,” said Sara Abubakar Musa, 24, who was displaced by armed militias from her village several hours north of El Fasher. “How can they give us such a name?” Ms. Musa was among those whom Mr. Annan never got to meet. On the eve of his visit, she recalled, government trucks showed up at Meshtel, a camp generally more squalid and unsightly. She said people had been ordered to grab their possessions and go – not home, but to Abushouk, on the outskirts of town, ensuring that Mr. Annan would not see their severe hardship. Such forced relocations have occurred here and in other parts of Darfur, Sudan’s troubled western region, where more than a million people have been driven from their homes. As recently as this week, government officials were offering cash, food and other incentives to lure people living in resettlement camps back to their villages. Then there are those like Ms. Musa who are simply made to move. The aid workers condemn the government practice of trying to lure the displaced people back to their villages, but it is the residents themselves who typically speak out the loudest. Most say they will not go home until they are assured that Darfur is safe. By nearly all accounts, a month after the high-profile visits from Mr. Annan and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, it is not. This is so despite increasing pressure – including a United Nations Security Council resolution implying sanctions – on Sudan’s government to rein in marauding militias, known as the Janjaweed. The United States Congress and others have called the killings in Darfur genocide. This vast region of scrub and sand is still marked by tension, insecurity and lawlessness, driven either by run-of-the-mill bandits or the Janjaweed militias, which the government has armed and backed in its conflict with two rebel groups. The rebels have fought since early 2003 for more resources for the black African majority in Darfur, which they say has been neglected by a government in Khartoum dominated by Arabs. Camps like Abushouk are where the thousands caught in the middle of the conflict find refuge in neat rows of huts, each covered with plastic sheeting to keep out the rains. Mr. Powell came to Abushouk in late June and suggested afterward that he knew that conditions elsewhere in Darfur were much worse, despite the government’s best efforts to hide the worst of camps, like Meshtel. There are two health clinics in Abushouk, and evenly spaced latrines. So organized is this camp that road signs have been stuck in the sand. But Abushouk has a bad neighborhood too. That is where Ms. Musa and the others transferred from Meshtel continue to live in squalor compared with their compatriots in other parts of the camp. Old clothes hung on wooden poles are all that protect them from the elements. They relieve themselves in the sand. Many here lived with relatives in El Fasher after being forced out of their villages by armed militias. But when they saw other displaced people receiving benefits, they began camping out at Meshtel. Their approach failed, and they were moved once again. The other day, several hundred of those moved from the Meshtel camp looked on as aid workers gave out rations to other residents of Abushouk. When people from Meshtel would step forward, without the required registration card, the authorities would push them back. The giveaway finished, and the only people left, unfed, were those from Meshtel. Help may be on the way. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which coordinates aid in the camp, says it intends to begin providing assistance to the people from Meshtel soon. “These people were brought in all of a sudden, with no organization,” said Jean-François Sonnay, head of the Red Cross office in El Fasher. “We hope to start distributing to them in the next few days.” And officials at the World Food Program said the people from Meshtel will soon be added to its ration list. But the people themselves have heard nothing, which is by design. Aid workers fear that if word gets out, residents of the nearby town will flock to Abushouk. Until the aid does arrive, the outcasts whom Mr. Annan almost met are confused by the treatment they are receiving. “We don’t know why we don’t get the same as everyone else,” said Ms. Musa, whose two children are recovering from malaria. “No one wants to register us. It’s not fair. Everybody is suffering, but we’re suffering even more.”

Xinhua 3 Aug 2004 Sudan deploys 5000 police in Darfur BEIJING, Aug. 3 (Xinhua via COMTEX)– A senior Sudanese police official says the Sudanese government has deployed 5000 police in its Darfur region. Vice Police Inspector General Hussein Osman made the announcement in Khartoum on Monday. He added the number will be increased to 6000 in a few days. Their major task is to maintain law and order in the region, CRIENGLISH.com reported Tuesday. He noted some local police stations have been reconstructed and re-opened.The government says it will provide them with communication tools and other equipment.

AFP 4 Aug 2004 African Union to deploy peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region: AU NAIROBI, Aug 4 (AFP) – The African Union plans to transform a small force it was due to send to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region into a 2,000-strong peacekeeping mission, an AU official said on Wednesday. The pan-African body was already planning to send some 300 troops to Darfur to protect its team of observers and monitors overseeing the implementation of a shaky ceasefire deal between government-backed militia and rebel groups. The United Nations estimates 50,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict involving government forces and their Janjaweed allies against two rebel movements, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement.

4 Aug 2004 Darfur’s ragtag rebels vow to fight for all ‘marginalised’ Sudanese by Aymeric Vincenot NORTH DARFUR, Sudan, Aug 4 (AFP) – The students, farmers and former soldiers who make up the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel force battling government-backed militias in the Darfur region say they fight for all Sudanese marginalised by the Khartoum government. “The key jobs are monopolised by the elite of the north,” the outfit’s secretary general, Bahan Idriss Abu-Garda, told AFP as he sat in a camp in a “liberated zone” in the desert of North Darfur region. “We want all the Sudanese people to share all the jobs in Sudan, from president to the lowest jobs, according to their qualifications and not their origins,” he said. The JEM, along with the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), rose up in February last year to fight for the rights of black African ethnic minorities in the western region. Since then, the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum has come under massive diplomatic pressure to rein in the government-backed Janjaweed militia who are accused of terrorizing the region’s minorities since the launch of the uprising. The United Nations describes the humanitarian crisis in Darfur as currently the world’s worst, with up to 50,000 people dead and more than a million driven from their villages. “The marginalised areas have been marginalised for 50 years,” complained Abu-Garda. The men who fight alongside him were students, teachers, farmers or soldiers before they joined the rebel ranks. Some are dressed in combat gear, others in the region’s traditional long robe and loose trousers. All wear the country’s trademark headscarf, which protects them from both the sun and desert dust. Each man has an assault rifle, most of which the rebels say were seized after battles with the horse- and camel-riding Janjaweed. Their four-wheel drive vehicles sometimes sport rocket-propelled grenade launchers or machine guns. One rebel who gave his name as Omar said he used to be a captain in the Sudanese military. “I couldn’t stay in army while my brothers in Darfur were joining the rebellion to fight the Janjawwed,” the 37-year-old told AFP. Jamal, another rebel, said he was so outraged by reports of massacres that he gave up an easy life in Khartoum, where he lived with his wife and children and ran a business, to return to his native Darfur to become as a rebel in the harsh desert. The rebels of the JEM, which says it has about 7,000 fighters, live a nomadic life, frequently moving their camps or taking refuge in villages abandoned after attacks by the Janjajweed. They say about 800 villages have been burned down and some 70,000 civilians killed in what they call a genocide. Here in this desert camp, as a few men head off on a patrol, others sit around and play cards or chess as they listen to one fighter making melancholy music from a harp he had fashioned out of an old oil can and a bit of wood. JEM secretary general Abu-Garda compares the situation in Darfur with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. “The government arms some tribes to kill other tribes. The first time it happened in Rwanda, now it’s in Sudan,” he said. The rebel leader, whose group insists it is not seeking independence for Darfur, said he wanted his oil-rich nation to take full advantage of its natural resources and provide development for all its people. “Sudan is not a poor country considering the resources. (But) All the developed areas are in the north. We need equal development and equal distribution of the wealth in Sudan.” The MEJ says it has respected a ceasefire it signed with the Khartoum government in April along with the second rebel group. The rebel forces say they control all the rural areas of Darfur, with government troops confined to the region’s towns. The Sudanese government in May signed a deal with another rebel group to end more than 20 years of civil war in southern Sudan, which was also fuelled by claims of discrimination against non-Arabs. The accord included power-sharing and deals on the division of oil wealth. Observers say that the Darfur rebels are hoping they can secure a similar deal.

AFP 4 Aug 2004 Fierce fighting in Sudan’s Darfur: rebel group N’DJAMENA, Aug 4 (AFP) – Fierce fighting has broken out between rebel groups and government backed Arab militia in the crisis-hit Sudanese region of Darfur, a rebel leader said on Wednesday. “Since last night (Tuesday) about 5000 Janjaweed have been attacking our two movements in Mahadjiria and Cheeria, between Nyala and El-Fasher in the south of Darfur,” a spokesman of the rebel Movement for Justice and Equality (MJE) said. Ahmat Toggo said a number of rebels had been killed or wounded, but would not be more specific. He said the fighting was still going on at Midday on Wednesday. “These clashes, which have been exceptionally intense, have meant that observers from the ceasefire commission based in El-Fasher have not been able to reach the front line,” said Toggo. “This attack against our positions calls into the question the overall ceasefire and proves once again that Sudan is violating the ceasefire,” he added. Toggo said his group would issue a statement regarding its position with respect to the ceasefire after a meeting of his rebel group. The ceasefire was signed on April 8 in the Chadian capital by the rebels and the Sudanese government. Tens of thousands of people have died and more than a million been driven from their homes since the rebels, fighting for the rights of the ethnic African minority, launched an uprising against the Sudanese army and its Arab militia allies. The Arab militias, also known as Janjaweed, have been accused by rights groups and locals in Darfur of ethnic cleansing. The African Union said on Wednesday it was planning to send a 2,000-strong peacekeeping force to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, which the United Nations says is the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

World Food Programme 4 Aug 2004 Skies rain food bombs over hungry Darfur FUR BURANGA, WEST DARFUR, August 4 – Food bombs in 50-kilogram bags have started to rain down over Sudan’s West Darfur state as WFP starts air dropping supplies for of tens of thousands of people cut off by insecurity and the rainy season. WFP’s four-engined Antonov-12 and larger Ilyushin-76 transport aircraft screamed low over the farming town of Fur Buranga, 150 kilometres south of the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina, to drop 202 tons of food in the first three days of the operation that started August 2. On a drop run, the aircraft suddenly raises its nose once it reaches an altitude of 200 metres, allowing gravity to pull the 50-kilogram bags of food tied in one large bundle out of the rear ramp. As they fall, the bags break up into individual sacks before slamming into the second half of the clearly marked drop zone, the size of about 1.5 soccer fields. ONLY OPTION “Dropping food by air is always an expensive last resort, but for many parts of Darfur we simply have no other option at this time of year,” said Ramiro Lopes da Silva, WFP’s Country Director in Sudan. “The start of these air drops, which require an enormous amount of planning and resources, is a further sign of our commitment to ensure that the people of Darfur are given all possible assistance to survive this most appalling crisis. But to do this properly we still urgently need contributions of food and money,” he added. Fur Buranga, 10 kilometres east of the border with Chad, has been totally cut off by road since July 19 – although for weeks before then commercial truckers refused to take WFP food and other aid there because of the risks from insecurity and their trucks becoming bogged down on dirt roads turned into mud traps by the rains. UNDERLYING TENSION “Before this food arrived, we ate one meal a day every two days,” said one woman, cradling her baby son after receiving a one-month WFP ration of the local sorghum staple, wheat, corn-soya blend (CSB) enriched food, dried peas and salt for her family. “There was food in the market but we couldn’t afford it.” Reflecting underlying tension, she declined to be named because plainclothes local intelligence officers were loitering nearby, listening to what she said. “I and my father worked to try to end money to buy food. Asked whether she now felt safe in Fur Buranga, the plainclothes intelligence officers terminated the interview. People in Fur Buranga driven from their homes by attacks by the Janjaweed militia said that they would only return to their home areas when they received concrete and real guarantees that they would be safe. DONKEYS AND CARTS Their obvious delight at receiving food is clear as teams of men and carts drawn by donkeys stream into the drop zone after each run to collect the bags and move to the nearby distribution point. Men shouted and laughed as they spread out over the zone strewn with hundreds of large bags. Very few split on impact with the ground, but whenever they do teams of women painstakingly sweep up every grain with brushes and sift them to remove debris. WFP has long experience at air dropping food. For more than a decade, WFP has mounted massive food airdrops into southern Sudan as a means of reaching the most vulnerable. In Darfur, WFP uses a Mi-8 helicopter to ferry in eight-person preparation teams to clear the drop site and inform the beneficiaries. After the food is dropped, eight-person teams from WFP and partner Save the Children Fund United States oversee food distributions on the same day. SEVEN DROPS The Janjaweed raided and looted Fur Buranga last year and all civilians fled. Some have since returned, their numbers swelled by displaced people seeking sanctuary. The town now has an estimated population of 50,000, of which 26,000 will receive food from the WFP air drops – the first to a total of seven places with a total population of 72,000 over the next four weeks. A total of 1,400 tonnes of food will be dropped at the seven sites. Scattered throughout the grounds of Fur Buranga’s new hospital, which was caught up in the violence before it could even open, hundreds of new arrivals live in cramped and dirty conditions inside makeshift huts made of branches precariously holding up sheets of plastic. Elders told WFP staff that many were too old or busy with their families to make it to the food distribution. So WFP said that the food would be transported to the hospital camp. PLANTING SEASON PASSED Asked whether they would go home, most people said they couldn’t because the Janjaweed were still around. Even if their security could be guaranteed, almost all of them said they expected to be stuck in Fur Buranga into next year because the May-June planting season had passed this year so they would have to wait until the next. A temporary shortage of jet fuel in Sudan has hindered both the airdrop operation and an on-going WFP airlift from Addis Ababa of thousands of tonnes of CSB to the Darfur states. The government of Sudan has recently imported 10,000 tons of jet fuel to address the shortage. WFP is discussing with the government measures to guarantee sufficient fuel for its humanitarian operation. Unless the low levels of jet fuel force a temporary suspension of the air drops, WFP plans to continue them throughout the rainy season into September, by which time all the locations should once again be accessible by road — the mainstay of WFP’s campaign to get food to the hungry people of the three Darfur states.

Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo) 5 Aug 2004 weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004 Against the clock Can Sudan meet a 30-day deadline to end the political deadlock in Darfur, asks Gamal Nkrumah It is make-or-break for the Sudanese government. Last Friday the United Nations Security Council passed a US-sponsored resolution giving the Sudanese government a 30-day deadline to end the bloody conflict between Sudanese government forces and allied Arab militias known as the Janjaweed on the one hand, and indigenous non-Arab armed opposition groups on the other. If Sudan fails to meet the deadline it will face diplomatic and economic sanctions, and possibly military intervention in the war- torn province of Darfur. The big question is whether Sudan will oblige. The Sudanese government must not now exhibit its by now familiar cynical refusal to own up to the consequences of its policies, one- sided intervention and in some instances inaction, in Darfur. There are signs that the Sudanese government is acquiescing to some of the West’s demands. But Sudanese government officials are sending conflicting signals. “The door of jihad is still open, and if it has been closed in the south it will be opened in Darfur,” warned the Sudanese armed forces spokesman General Mohamed Beshir Soleiman this week. “Some government officials are posturing and acting as if they can take on the superpowers and challenge the UN resolution, which they claim is an act of war,” former Sudanese foreign minister Mansour Khalid told Al-Ahram Weekly. Other officials, he said, are making conciliatory gestures. “This does not help the government’s cause,” Khalid said. “We are ready to share power and resources in Darfur. We are ready to reach an agreement as we have done in resolving the conflict in southern Sudan,” Sudan’s Information Minister Al- Zahawi Ibrahim Malik told reporters in Khartoum recently. But Khalid thinks that comparisons cannot be drawn between southern and western Sudan. “In southern Sudan there are religious and cultural dimensions to the conflict. The people of Darfur, Arab and non- Arab, are Muslim. Moreover, there have been traditional claims to separation in southern Sudan, which is not the case in Darfur,” he added. Sudanese officials complain that the country’s sovereignty is being eroded. At the risk of losing the peace dividend from concluding a deal with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), some Sudanese officials are speaking of jihad in Darfur. Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) must institute constitutional democracy. The UN resolution provides an opportunity for the Sudanese government to make good its pledges of political reform. Sudanese armed forces must not only halt all hostilities in Darfur and end 18 months of counter- insurgency measures in a region the size of France, but it must also disarm and bring to book the Arab Janjaweed militias that helped the Sudanese army quell the uprising in Darfur. Disarming the Janjaweed will not be easy. They are well armed and have close ties with government circles and they share the government’s religious zealotry. The African Union’s first external contingent of armed troops has arrived in Darfur. The French, meanwhile, are policing the Chadian-Sudanese border. The world is scrutinising steps taken by the Sudanese government to defuse the crisis in Darfur. Last month Sudanese authorities dispatched 6,000 policemen to Darfur and they signalled that they would be increasing the number to 12,000 by the end of August. The US remains unimpressed. Should the Sudanese government fail to reconcile Arab and non-Arab in Darfur, it will be exposed as politically bankrupt as the nation is economically. “They must address the problems that have been simmering for a long time in Darfur such as poverty, underdevelopment and political marginalisation. The people of Darfur want political and economic empowerment,” Khalid said. The Sudanese authorities seem increasingly impotent as the situation deteriorates. And the foot- dragging and duplicity have only made the security situation more explosive. In this sense the UN Security Council’s resolution was a victory for common sense. Sudan now needs to use its remaining political capital effectively. Khartoum has sensibly promised to disarm the Janjaweed. Sudan sits on a vast reservoir of oil. “There is an external factor, and there are axe-grinders,” Khalid said. “But the main dynamic is domestic,” he added. The main armed opposition groups in Darfur are the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) affiliated to Al-Turabi’s opposition Popular National Congress Party (PNC) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Both want a bigger say in the running of the affairs of Darfur. Meanwhile, a second conflict is threatening to break out as the Beja people of eastern Sudan begin to take up arms against the Sudanese authorities. With restive outlying regions the centre itself is on the verge of collapse. Can the Sudanese authorities bring order to this chaos? “Khartoum should realise that only through the unbanning of all Sudanese political parties and the lifting of all restrictions on political freedoms does Sudan stand a chance of getting to its own elections, due in three years time according to the Machakos Protocols,” says Khalid. But rekindling the spirit of a united Sudan will entail a massive round of reconciliation. The Sudanese government is under tremendous international pressure to cease hostilities in Darfur. The US and the European Union are both determined to see Sudan defuse the crisis in Darfur so that the one million displaced people and refugees return to their homesteads and villages. But it is wrong to pretend that simply pressuring the Sudanese government is a solution when it is by no means clear that the Sudanese authorities are capable of policing their state. Caption: A Sudanese woman with her child in the Kounougo refugee camp in eastern Chad. According to UN estimates, up to 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than one million have fled their homes, 200,000 of whom are seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad C a p t i o n 2: A Sudanese woman with her child in the Kounougo refugee camp in eastern Chad. According to UN estimates, up to 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than one million have fled their homes, 200,000 of whom are seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad

NYT 6 Aug 2004 Sudanese Suffer as Militias Hide in Plain Sight By MARC LACEY NYALA, Sudan, Aug. 5 – Sudan’s government lined up 50 prisoners at the main jail here recently and offered them as evidence to the world that it was cracking down on the militias that have stained so much of the desert sand of Darfur, the country’s western region, with blood. But when the men spoke and when their court files were reviewed, it quickly became clear that many of them were not members of the militias, which have displaced a million villagers in the last year and a half and killed tens of thousands in what the United States Congress calls a genocide. Among the group were petty criminals who had already been in jail as long as four years. One man’s charge was drinking wine in a country that forbids it. The United Nations Security Council has given Sudan until Aug. 30 to rein in the militias, called the Janjaweed, Arab tribesmen whom the government armed and then unleashed in Darfur to quell a rebellion among darker-skinned Africans that began in early 2003. Failure to disarm the militias could mean sanctions against the government in Khartoum. But Janjaweed is a fluid identity, and diplomats here say the government has exploited the ambiguity. First it armed the militias, rallied them and set them loose in Darfur. Then it gave many of the same men uniforms and declared them upholders of the law. Sometimes the Janjaweed have served as law enforcement officers by day and reverted to pillaging at night. The government says it has sent thousands of security officers to Darfur to impose order and plans to send thousands more. But whether the government is bringing the Janjaweed to heel, or even if it can, is far from clear. “If you sent 200 soldiers out to get the Janjaweed, maybe 50 of them would probably be Janjaweed themselves,” said Osman Mirghani, a prominent columnist for the Sudanese newspaper Al Rayaam who has written frequently and frankly about the conflict in Darfur, sometimes incurring the wrath of the government. “A Janjaweed is a Janjaweed when he is on his horse with his gun, going to burn and kill,” Mr. Mirghani said. “But when he comes back to his village and hides his gun he is no different than anyone else. Maybe he’s a policeman during the day and a Janjaweed at night.” Indeed, in many cases the government has provided the Janjaweed with uniforms, identification cards and commissions in the police, army or popular defense force, according to interviews with aid workers, local human rights advocates and others. As far as the government is concerned they are no longer Janjaweed. “I’m a soldier now,” said one such new recruit, a Arab teenager who was smiling as he cradled his assault rifle. He was speaking to his schoolteacher, a black African, who had seen him with Janjaweed leaders. Without their guns and horses, without the head wraps they use to shield themselves from Darfur’s searing heat and blowing wind, the Janjaweed blend easily into the local population. When not in government-issued camouflage uniforms, they wear the long white robes common among Sudanese. Some sit behind desks when they are not pillaging. Others herd camels by day but do unspeakable things once the desert turns dark at night. Further muddying things, the government accuses the rebels, who call themselves the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, of using camels during some of their attacks, pretending to be Janjaweed in an attempt to smear officials in Khartoum. To avoid confusion, some have stopped using the term Janjaweed altogether. The term itself is an amalgam of Arabic words that roughly translates as “a devil on horseback with a gun.” No one would ever admit to being one. ” ‘Janjaweed’ is a catchall phrase that means different things to different people,” said William Patey, the British ambassador to Sudan. “We need to be specific about what we mean, namely bandits, tribal militias or elements of the popular defense forces.” Not all of the Arab fighters one encounters in Darfur have followed the government’s script. Some are loyal only to themselves, roaming the countryside as criminals always have and taking advantage of the chaos. They take on anyone they encounter, including other Janjaweed. As for the convicts squatting in the dirt in Nyala’s jail, there were drug dealers, murderers and thieves. Just who was a Janjaweed militiaman remained a matter of interpretation. None of the men would acknowledge having been a part of the loose bands of Arab fighters. It was far easier to pick out who had nothing to do with Darfur’s current chaos. There were prisoners who had been arrested two, three, even four years ago. Many others were picked up for the kinds of theft, killing and other crime that has always been a part of this long-neglected part of Sudan. There were six men, including two fathers and their sons, who were accused torching a village north of Nyala called Haloof, killing 23 villagers, wounding 9 others and stealing all of the residents’ cows and goats. “They say I am a Janjaweed,” said Suleiman Muhammad Shariff, 74, an elder in an Arab tribe accused of attacking Haloof. “It’s not true.” Only the villagers who have been the victims of the Janjaweed’s wrath, who have heard their horses coming and experienced their ruthless attacks, seem to have no trouble identifying the militiamen. “A Janjaweed came right over my fence, pointed a gun at me and took my horse,” said Abdallah Ibrahim, who was robbed last weekend right inside a camp for displaced people in Geneina, a town near Sudan’s border with Chad. The very same day, another woman was shot by a man she considered a Janjaweed in the same camp. He made away with her cow. Earlier that day a teenage boy was shot in the foot after three Janjaweed accosted him as he tended cattle outside the same settlement. They made away with the entire herd. As Darfur is now, a fifth of the population has been displaced and is living in such camps. Most have been stripped of their belongings. Their villages have been torched to the ground. How many bodies remain buried in Darfur remains an unknown, although estimates range from 30,000 to five times that. There have long been tribal clashes in Darfur between Arab animal herders and the black Africans who plant crops in the dry soil. Their different livelihoods have led to disputes over land, over stolen animals, over any number of infractions. “We are camel herders, and we have always had guns to defend ourselves,” said Juma Dagalow Musa, a tribal leader north of Nyala, where torched villages dot the landscape for miles. Mr. Musa said he was no Janjaweed but understood why Arab tribes had friction with the black Africans. His tribe lost 1,400 camels in February and March of this year, he said, all pilfered by armed rebels from black African tribes. “We wanted to go recover them,” he said, insisting that he had persuaded his tribal fighters to stay put. Many fighters, all over Darfur, could not be contained. The United States government has begun preparing a list of Janjaweed leaders, relying on information culled from private relief organizations working in Darfur. Others in Darfur are tallying their own informal Janjaweed rosters. “There is no shortage of names,” said one official who is tracking them. “There are thousands of them, but how many thousands is anybody’s guess.” At one squatter settlement in the remote reaches of Northern Darfur, a man who was forced from his village by the Janjaweed months ago keeps his own tally of local Janjaweed leaders, names he receives from word of mouth from area villagers. The man, who whispered his name but insisted that it not appear in print, disappeared into a tiny makeshift hut and came out holding a well-worn notebook that he keeps hidden from the local authorities. He has become the camp’s security monitor, a fact that he keeps quiet when government officials are around. He writes down Janjaweed offenses. On July 14 a group of Janjaweed on camels and horses stole 30 animals. The next day a group of Janjaweed came near the camp and fired their guns into the air to prevent some people from collecting firewood. Two days later Janjaweed intimidated some people trying to plant seeds near the camp by firing into the air. The next day Janjaweed returned and stole 80 goats and a donkey. At the top of this man’s Janjaweed list was Musa Hilal, one of the men whose names Pierre-Richard Prosper, the American ambassador for war crimes issues, uttered in testimony before Congress. Mr. Hilal is said to control thousands of fighters and to enjoy close relations with top government officials. “Musa Hilal is the man behind the Janjaweed around here,” said the villager who logs the attacks. Mr. Hilal, a tribal leader from farther north, in El Fasher, admits that he has rallied his Arab tribe’s vast network of fighters against black Africans. But in conversations with reporters and diplomats, he rejects the term Janjaweed, which he says applies to outlaws, not agents of the government like him. ” ‘Janjaweed’ is an insult,” he told Reuters. Mr. Hilal says he is acting on behalf of the government, protecting Arabs against the black African rebels. “They rebelled, threatened us, tried to sow discord between us,” he said. “We retaliated, and we are criminals?” Caught in the middle of the conflict have been villagers going about their lives. They accuse Mr. Hilal’s militias of torching their huts and killing indiscriminately, as well as raping and looting at will. He says his fighters have focused their efforts on rebels, not civilians. One thing is clear: it will be difficult for the government to turn back the clock in Darfur and take away all of the guns. Many allies of the Janjaweed are allies of the government, not people the authorities in Khartoum will be inclined to offend. Perhaps more realistic than total disarmament, elders in Darfur say, is some kind of truce, but even that remains a tricky prospect, particularly given that there are countless Janjaweed militiamen whose identities are uncertain. “Those are Janjaweed,” a black African villager said along the main street in the town of Kitum, pointing to a pickup truck roaring past with men piled into the back. The truck was outfitted with a high-caliber gun, and many of the men wore camouflage.

AP 7 Aug 2004 U.N. Blames Sudan for Civilian Atrocities By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 3:02 a.m. ET GENEVA (AP) — A top U.N. human rights investigator Friday released a scathing report that blames the Sudanese government for atrocities against its civilians in the Darfur region and says “millions of civilians” could die. “It is beyond doubt that the Government of the Sudan is responsible for extrajudicial and summary executions of large numbers of people over the last several months in the Darfur region, as well as in the Shilook Kingdom in Upper Nile State,” said Asma Jahangir, the U.N. investigator on executions, in a report based on a 13-day visit to the region in June. “The current humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur, for which the government is largely responsible, has put millions of civilians at risk, and it is very likely that many will die in the months to come as a result of starvation and disease,” said Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer. Jahangir said there was “overwhelming evidence” that the killing was carried out “in a coordinated manner by the armed forces of the government and government-backed militias. They appear to be carried out in a systematic manner.” The scale of violations means they “could constitute crimes against humanity for which the government of the Sudan must bear responsibility,” she said in the 26-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. A leading U.S. lawmaker toured camps in eastern Chad holding hundreds of thousands of refugees and said he would investigate the relationship between the Sudan government and the militias. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist also said the threat of U.N. sanctions against Sudan was not enough to end the violence. The Tennessee Republican said he planned to talk with other U.S. lawmakers about remedying that, but he did not elaborate. The U.S. Congress has labeled the atrocities genocide. The United Nations has described the conflict in Darfur, which began with a rebellion early last year, as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Last week the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution giving Sudan 30 days to curb the pro-government Arab militias blamed for the violence in Darfur or face diplomatic and economic penalties. The militias, called the Janjaweed, have been blamed for violence that has killed 30,000 people, forced a million from their homes and left an estimated 2.2 million in urgent need of relief aid. “I remain seriously concerned at the very slow and negligent reaction of the government toward the situation unfolding in Darfur,” Jahangir said. “Such a reaction despite the huge international outcry would appear to indicate either complete disrespect for the right to life of the population of Darfur, or, at worst, complicity in the events.” She said all attacks against the civilian population must stop and that the government must disarm all militias. The government also must assure that aid workers have complete access to people in need, Jahangir said. The African Union worked Friday to boost the number of troops it plans to send to the region, asking Rwanda to increase its contribution from about 150 soldiers to nearly 1,000. The AU said last month it would send 300 soldiers to Darfur to protect its monitors. But Wednesday it announced plans to increase the number of soldiers to as many as 1,800. In New York, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the Sudanese government and the United Nations would sign an agreement Monday outlining steps Sudan must take this month to start disarming the militias and other outlawed groups and to improve security in western Darfur. He said the agreement reached Wednesday night by Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and U.N. special representative Jan Pronk “has now been finalized by the Sudanese government.” A copy of the agreement was given to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who was expected to send it to the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council. It was not made public. “A formal copy will be signed by Mr. Pronk and the foreign minister and officially issued on Monday,” Eckhard said. But it wasn’t clear whether the Sudanese Cabinet had officially approved the agreement. Officials in Khartoum said the Cabinet was expected to discuss the agreement during a meeting on Sunday. Ismail said Thursday in Khartoum that foreign military intervention to end the Darfur crisis was unlikely. He said the government “will do our best” to meet Security Council demands to end the region’s violence although he called the resolution “unfair.” His comments followed a mass state-organized protest on Wednesday to condemn the U.N. resolution. John Danforth, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday the clock was ticking for Sudan and it must show by the end of the month that it is making “a good faith effort” to comply with the council resolution. Jahangir said the government was sponsoring militias to fight the rebels “and, more distressingly, to terrorize and kill civilians suspected of supporting the rebels.” She said she had met a large number of people who “had a strong perception” that the government “was pursuing a policy of ‘Arabization”’ of the country, especially the Darfur region. “Allegedly, those of Arab descent seek to portray themselves as ‘pure’ Muslims as opposed to Muslims of African ethnicity,” she said. Jahangir said she had “credible information” that members of the armed forces, the volunteer Popular Defense Force and government-sponsored militias “had in recent months attacked villages and summarily executed civilians, looted homes and forcibly displaced the inhabitants.” “The most often heard report was of villages being surrounded by military vehicles accompanied by Arab militia riding horses. The local population was plundered, looted, tortured, raped and often shot at in a random manner; however, adult men seemed often to be specifically targeted. “Before leaving, the Arab militia would burn down the villages. In some cases, helicopters or Antonov airplanes were used to bomb or attack the villages or to provide cover for ground operations, including operations carried out by Arab militia.” She said the government “appeared oblivious to the dramatic and disastrous proportions and the magnitude” of the crisis. “The persistent denial of the current humanitarian disaster in Darfur by most government officials was shocking, Jahangir said.

AP 7 Aug 2004 U.N. – Sudan Deal Calls for Safety Zones By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 7, 2004 Filed at 4:29 a.m. ET UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A new agreement between the United Nations and Sudan requires the government to create safe areas in the crisis-ridden Darfur region within 30 days so civilians can search for food and water and work their land without fear of attack. The “Plan of Action for Darfur” would halt all military operations by government forces, militias, and rebel groups in these safe areas, which are likely to be set up in camps where thousands of Sudanese have taken refuge and around towns and villages which still have large populations. The agreement, which was reached Wednesday night by Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and U.N. special representative Jan Pronk, “has now been finalized by the Sudanese government,” U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday. It will be signed Monday by the two officials in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, he said. Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomes the agreement and “attaches great importance to substantive and verifiable progress being made during the next 30 days towards restoring full security for the Darfur region,” Eckhard said. The agreement outlines specific steps that the government of Sudan must take to demonstrate to the U.N. Security Council that it is moving to end the 17-month conflict in the western Darfur region. The United States estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed and the United Nations says 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes and an estimated 2.2 million people are in urgent need of food, medicine and shelter. The U.S. Congress and some humanitarian groups have accused Sudan of genocide. On July 30, the Security Council passed a resolution giving Sudan 30 days to curb pro-government Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, which have been accused of attacking black African farmers in Darfur, and to improve security and humanitarian access. Otherwise, the council warned that Sudan could face possible diplomatic and economic penalties, which the United States insists will be sanctions. “Signing agreements and more promises won’t do much for the people on the ground,” said Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Danforth. “What we need is action and that’s what the council will be evaluating in roughly 20 days.” Under the agreement, the government’s first action must be the creation of safe areas, which would then be linked by secure roads. “These tasks should be carried out by Sudan police forces to maintain confidence already created by redeployment of (the government’s) armed forces,” the agreement says. The creation of safe areas will provide a safe haven for those who fled and allow them to search for water and food, take care of animals and work on their land, it says. To control the activities of the Sudanese armed forces, the agreement calls for a halt to all offensive military operations in the proposed safe areas, including government action against rebel groups. Under the plan, the government must also “instruct” armed militias “over which it has influence” to halt their activities and lay down their weapons. The government will also ask rebel groups participating in peace talks to immediately halt offensive military operations in the proposed safe areas, in accordance with an April ceasefire agreement. The agreement also requires the Sudanese government to allow African Union military observers to monitor its performance and to make “an unequivocal declaration of commitment to start the Darfur peace talks as soon as possible” and bring them “to a successful and speedy conclusion.”

washingtonpost.com 7 Aug 2004 Monitor Blames Sudan For Darfur Militia Killings U.N. Awaits Pact on Steps to Halt Atrocities By Colum Lynch Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 7, 2004; Page A14 UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 — An independent U.N. human rights monitor said Friday that it is “beyond a doubt” that Sudan bears responsibility “for extrajudicial and summary executions of large numbers of people” in the country’s Darfur region. In a sharply critical 26-page report, Asma Jahangir, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, also said that members of government-backed Arab militias responsible for some of the worst excesses have been incorporated into the Sudanese police and armed forces. “Some of the militia leaders have been integrated into the Sudanese armed forces and given official military ranks,” Jahangir wrote. The Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, are believed to have killed as many as 50,000 black civilians in Darfur over the past 18 months and to have driven more than 1 million from their homes. The Security Council adopted a resolution July 30 warning Sudan that it could face sanctions if it failed to demonstrate a commitment to disarm, arrest and prosecute militia members within 30 days. The violence in Darfur began in February 2003, when two black rebel groups launched an offensive against the government, citing discrimination against the region’s three main black tribes. The government armed and trained local Arab militias to put down the rebellion and drive thousands of potential backers from their villages, according to U.S. officials and human rights groups. Sudan has repeatedly denied that it supports the militias and maintains that its attempts to halt their activities have been undermined by rebel activities. Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Elfatih Erwa, was unavailable for comment. The report’s release came as the Sudanese government finalized an agreement with the United Nations to establish a series of “safe areas” in Darfur within 30 days to protect displaced civilians. Sudanese authorities are required to “provide secure routes” to the havens and immediately cease all offensive military operations against the rebels in those areas, according to the agreement. The two-page accord, to be signed Monday in Khartoum by the United Nations’ top envoy, Jan Pronk, and Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustaf Osman Ismail, notes that Sudan may not be able to fully meet the Security Council’s demand to disarm the militia within 30 days. It outlined a series of actions Sudan could take to “demonstrate its commitment to comply” and escape sanctions. The Sudanese government pledges to “identify and declare those militias over which it has influence and instruct them to cease their activities forthwith,” the accord states. “They would then lay down their weapons.” Jahangir’s findings, drawn from a 13-day trip to Sudan in June, echo recent reports of Sudanese complicity in Darfur atrocities by human rights organizations and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Jahangir said that eyewitnesses reported the presence of mass graves in some villages and charged that government-backed militias routinely looted houses, killed unarmed civilians, raped women and visited local hospitals, where they executed the wounded. She said that it was too dangerous to verify the reports of mass graves. While Jahangir stopped short of declaring the violence in Darfur genocide, she said, “I have to conclude that there is overwhelming evidence that extrajudicial killings of civilians in Darfur have been carried out, with some exceptions, in a coordinated manner by the armed forces of the government and government-backed militias.”

Sunday Times (Johannesburg) ANALYSIS August 8, 2004 Darfur Genocide Reveals World’s Quiet Savagery Johannesburg Indifference condemns hundreds of thousands of people, with nobody willing to ‘claim’ the victims – not even their oppressors, writes David Nally ‘In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I am not degraded and murdered.” – Aimé Césaire Genocide is defined in a 1948 UN Convention as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by “killing members of the group”; “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”; or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. With this in mind consider just a fraction of the chilling evidence that continues to trickle in from Darfur. Amnesty International recently released a report that documents the experiences of hundreds of women who have been systematically raped (for no reason other than they are black African women) or sold as sex slaves. Monitors from the African Union said that in an incident three weeks ago, militiamen killed villagers by chaining them up and then burning them alive. The Washington Post published an interview with Musa Hilal, a sheikh who along with six other individuals is accused of organising the Janjaweed militia’s terror tactics in Darfur. In 1997 Hilal was jailed for killing 17 Africans in Darfur; when the region erupted in rebellion in early 2003 the Arab-led government in Khartoum released Hilal on instruction to organise his militia. To date 1.5 million people have been displaced, 2.2 million are in desperate need of food and medicine, and it is (conservatively) estimated that 350 000 might die before the end of this year. The list of government-sponsored crimes against humanity could go on and on. The point worth stressing is this: on the charge of genocide there is no fear of crying wolf in Darfur. However, in refusing to call the crimes in Darfur “genocide”, the world has opted to mimic the policy of the Sudanese Foreign Office, which recently declared that while there are “problems” in Darfur, “there is no famine, no epidemic diseases”. Of course, it should also be made clear that such apathy-masquerading-as-prudence is not unique to the West. To their immense discredit many Arab regimes have refused to condemn the Sudanese government. Given the “benumbing indifference” (the Times of India) that characterises the international scene, it seems alarmingly easy to agree that the killing in Darfur “has exposed the quiet savagery of the rest of the world” (the Washington Post). In fact, some analysts (for example, the New York Times journalist who declared: “Western public opinion will not be as moved by the plight of the Sudanese as by that of the Kosovars”) outwardly endorse this “quiet savagery” (the New York Times). Few have adequately questioned whether such “benumbing indifference” and “quiet savagery” are a cause or an effect of these atrocities. In a chapter of great import to the situation in Darfur (entitled “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”), Hannah Arendt writes about how totalitarian politics visibly exposed “the sufferings of more and more groups of people to whom suddenly the rules of the world around them had ceased to apply”. Arendt continues: “It was precisely the seeming stability of the surrounding world that made each group forced out of its protective boundaries look like an unfortunate exception to an otherwise sane and normal rule, and which filled with equal cynicism victims and observers of an apparently unjust and abnormal fate.” History recalls that the lives of various minority peoples in Europe – most notably the Jews and Gypsies – were threatened only after “a condition of complete rightlessness was created”. The huge irony, which Arendt explains, is that these “stateless minorities” ought to have been able to fall back on their supposedly “inalienable” human rights. In fact, for these unfortunates it was, in a sense, not that they were oppressed but that nobody wanted to oppress them: “Only in the last stage of a rather lengthy process is their right to live threatened; only if they remain perfectly ’superfluous’, if nobody can be found to ‘claim’ them, may their lives be in danger.” The mass deportation of “undesirables” from country after country during World War Two exposed – with shameless clarity – the naivety of those who claimed that “inalienable” human rights would save the many who had had their national rights removed. In other words, when human beings lost the protections afforded by citizenship, when they were stripped down to sheer biological existence (or “bare life”), they became at the same time utterly expendable. To the extent that we are all reducible to bare bio logical existence, to the extent that human-made protections like citi zenship can be created and suspended, we are all potentially rightless and “super fluous”. Once again genocide has exposed the plight of an ever-increasing number of people who find themselves stripped of their national rights and thus – in the eyes of the rest of the world – of the right to have rights (the Khartoum government has, after all, turned against its own people, and the survivors in the camps frankly admit that going home isn’t an option). But perhaps the greatest tragedy – evident in the rising normality of camp life (think not only of the camps in Darfur and Chad but also of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib) and the disturbing stability of the surrounding world – is the sad knowledge that the present prolongation of Sudanese lives is due to charity and not to right. “For no law exists which could force nations to feed them; their freedom of movement, if they have it at all, gives them no right to residence which even the jailed criminal enjoys as a matter of course; and their freedom of opinion is a fool’s freedom, for nothing they think matters anyhow,” says Arendt. In his interview with the Washington Post, Sheikh Musa Hilal responded to the charge of genocide in frighteningly plain language. “No one can wipe out an ethnicity,” he said. “Never, never, never. No massacres,” echoed Abdul-Rahim Mohammed Hussein, Minister of the Interior, and the man tasked by Sudan’s president with resolving the crisis. “There have been no massive massacres – and no one can prove there have been.” Here in plain speech the essential issue seems to lie: no one is willing to “claim” the victims in Darfur – not even their oppressors. We thus have an almost preposterous situation of victims without oppressors and massacres without crimes. It is notoriously difficult to explain why genocide happens – at least in the sense of what motivates one group of people to systematically liquidate another group – but we can begin to assess the conditions that make human liquidation possible. One confirmed system is to create political-juridical exceptions (for example: refugees, “enemy combatants”, “stateless minorities”.) These people stand beyond the pale of the law and the protections it affords. As the “Final Solution” demonstrates, once human beings are stripped of their national protections – once they appear before the court of human opinion as human beings (bare biological existence) and not “citizens” – far from being protected, their very biological existence may now be challenged. According to political philosopher Giorgio Agamben this “state of exception” is the only legitimate way to explain the increased normalisation of camp life which connects the refugee tents in Darfur and Chad to the internment camps of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This also makes clear the racism behind the belief that “Western public opinion will not be as moved by the plight of the Sudanese as by that of the Kosovars”. Nally is working on his PhD in Geography at the University of British Columbia in Canada

washingtonpost.com As Darfur’s People Die Sunday, August 8, 2004; Page B06 FOUR MONTHS AGO, President Bush urged Sudan’s Arab-led government to end the destruction of ethnic African villages in its western province of Darfur and to do so “immediately.” Sudan’s government put its name to a cease-fire, then carried on killing civilians as though nothing had happened. Eighteen days after the president issued his warning, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned his Sudanese counterpart to express concern over Darfur; again the killing continued. In June Mr. Powell announced that State Department lawyers were considering whether Darfur’s violence qualified for the term “genocide,” and at the end of that month he visited Darfur in person, extracting fresh promises from Sudan’s government to bring the violence under control. Explaining the seriousness of Mr. Powell’s message, Charles R. Snyder, acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said, “We’re talking days, weeks, not months — not a month — to see whether or not they do what they said they would do.” One month and six days after that assurance, the question is what the United States is going to do. The Sudanese government’s intentions are obvious: to stall the international community by half-complying with its ultimatums, all the while sticking to the goal of destroying Darfur’s African population. To defuse foreign pressure, the government has made a show of punishing members of the Janjaweed militia that it armed to destroy villagers, but reports from the region suggest that many of these supposed militiamen are common criminals fished out of the local jails. Likewise the government has made a show of deploying more police officers in Darfur, supposedly to protect civilians, but some of these new police officers turn out to be Janjaweed killers wearing a different uniform. As Mr. Powell himself wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Sudan has not taken decisive steps to end the violence. The administration’s response, and that of the United Nations, is still predicated on the hope that this will change. The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution demanding that Sudan’s government end the violence by Aug. 30. But the new deadline seems no more serious than the past ones: Jan Pronk, the United Nations’ point man for the crisis, has been at pains to emphasize that “a full solution” is not expected. Mr. Pronk’s declaration reflects the truth that a solution is beyond the government’s capacity. Even if, by some miracle, Sudan’s rulers resolved to stop the violence, the Janjaweed death squads are too amorphous to be controllable. And even if Sudan tried to protect Darfur’s civilians, the memory of government helicopters attacking Darfuri villages would not be eradicated. Darfur’s 1.2 million refugees will not feel safe to return to their villages if the only protection offered comes from the government that poisoned their wells, killed their menfolk and raped their women. The solution is to press much harder for the deployment of African peacekeepers. So far, the African Union has promised to send 300 troops to the province, but their arrival has been held up because the civilian contractors hired to provide logistical support say they need time to organize the soldiers’ accommodations. The Africans are also talking about a larger commitment: Nigeria and Rwanda have each offered to send 1,000 troops, and Tanzania and Botswana may join together to form a third 1,000-strong contingent. The extra troops will also need logistical support, and the time to start arranging that is now. The United States has done more to help Darfur than any other country; France, which for a long time was reluctant to antagonize Sudan’s government, has now used its military base in neighboring Chad to assist Darfuri refugees; the Netherlands has given generously, most recently to finance relief helicopters. But the leaders of these countries should not be measuring their efforts against one another, still less calibrating their actions to avoid the blame for genocide in future historical accounting. The task for the Bush administration and its allies is more concrete: to get relief and peacekeepers to Darfur’s people before hundreds of thousands of them die.

english.aljazeera.net ‘ 9 Aug 2004 Sudan says UN’s Darfur toll inflated by Monday 09 August 2004 4:23 PM GMT Ismail says 5000 people have died, not 50,000 like the UN says Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Ismail has strongly disputed UN figures regarding the toll in Darfur, saying they have been multiplied up to 10 times, while the EU says there is no genocide in Darfur. Ismail said in Cairo the 17-month conflict in the Darfur region had led to the loss of approximately 5000 lives. Of these, 486 were Sudanese policemen. The UN says up to 50,000 people have died in Darfur, with a further 1.2 million displaced from their homes and more than 130,000 forced to flee to neighbouring Chad. Ismail said these figures were out of proportion and challenged the UN to give details, saying: “Tell us their names or show us their graves.” The government has sent its forces into Darfur to stabilise the area, protect the people and head off a civil war, which had threatened to engulf the region after the rebels took up arms and began terrorising the people, he added. Rebels to blame Sudan says rebels have political motives for destabilising Darfur “There is a humanitarian, security and political problem in Darfur as a result of the war that was started by the rebels for political reasons,” said Ismail. The situation had been misrepresented in media reports as “ethnic cleansing or genocide” of tribes by the so-called “Arab” Janjawid, he added. He said there was no need for an international peacekeeping force in the region, but added: “We do not have any problem with any number of observers or forces to protect them.” Observers could actually “contribute to confidence-building”, he said. No genocide In another development, the European Union said on Monday its fact-finding mission to Sudan had found no evidence of genocide in the Darfur region. “We are not in the situation of genocide there. But it is clear there is widespread killing going on and village burning of a fairly large scale” Pieter Feith, EU foreign policy adviser “We are not in the situation of genocide there,” Pieter Feith, an adviser to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, said upon returning from a visit to Sudan. “But it is clear there is widespread killing going on and village burning of a fairly large scale.” Ismail confirmed on Monday that Khartoum would send a high-level delegation to Abuja in Nigeria for negotiations with the rebels, sponsored by the African Union (AU), but stressed it would not accept any preconditions. “We welcome the announcement about the resumption of the negotiations and we will participate at the time and place stated,” he said. The AU had earlier said that peace talks would take place in the Nigerian capital on 23 August. An earlier AU effort to persuade the rebels to engage in direct political negotiations failed in mid-July when the two rebel groups walked out, insisting they would not participate in talks until their conditions were met. Aljazeera + Agencies

washingtonpost.com 18 Aug 2004 Targeting the Teachers of Darfur Assault on Educated Class an Effort to Erase History, Observers Say By Emily Wax Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, August 18, 2004; Page A12 OURE CASSONI, Chad She pulled tattered socks over her bony legs and stared at the ground, trying to hide the dirty, torn clothing she is so embarrassed to wear. Before a militia drove her African tribe off its farmland in western Sudan, before she had to wait in line for food rations in this refugee camp in the desert, Armani Tinjany was a high school agriculture teacher. Now she is a woman whose pride and energy are disintegrating. Six months ago, when she first arrived in Chad, Tinjany, her sister and a group of friends sat and wrote indignant letters to U.S., British and Chadian officials. They asked for help in Darfur, the region of western Sudan where a conflict has displaced 1.5 million Africans and left nearly 50,000 dead, according to aid groups. In an interview in February with The Washington Post, Tinjany said she had faith that she would return to Sudan, to the spacious compound of stone-walled huts where she lived at the edge of the Sahara desert, to her diet of fresh fruits and meat, to her job as a teacher. Today, she has no hope. She writes no letters. She becomes sick easily. She has lost weight, and her skeletal shoulder pokes through her dress. “I am a refugee now,” she said, letting the words sink in. “Are they going to leave us like this forever? My life, as I knew it, is finished.” Standing in line for a ration of millet, she started to cry. Violence began in Darfur about 18 months ago, when African groups rebelled against the government by attacking a military installation. The government responded by bombing areas of Darfur and by arming a marauding Arab militia called the Janjaweed, human rights and aid groups say. Since then, the African residents of Darfur have been uprooted, beaten, raped and left hungry. But the educated among them — teachers, students and community leaders — say they are being particularly targeted. They have been singled out by the government, they say, accused of treason and support for the rebellion, and prevented from speaking out about the crisis. Human rights investigators have called the assault on the educated an attempt to silence the residents of Darfur and a way to erase the community’s collective memory and destroy its political strength. “If you are a farmer, they will take your crops and kill you. If you are a woman, they will rape you. But if you are a teacher, then you have to run,” said Sharif Ishag, who once taught geography and now helps run the camp’s food distribution center for the International Rescue Committee. “They think anyone who can read and write and who can organize people and inspire minds are rebels.” Schools have been burned, desks broken and books shredded. In some areas, children have not been able to attend classes for nearly two years. Olivier Bercault, a Human Rights Watch team member who spent three weeks touring Darfur, called the targeting of teachers and schools “a nasty way to stop a culture and prevent people from being educated.” “People are not able to send their child to school. They are now sitting in refugee camps,” he said. “That lack of education, to me, is one of the purposes of ethnic cleansing. People keep debating if it’s genocide — we can leave that to the courts. But these are crimes against humanity.” Darfur residents and human rights investigators said there had long been a pattern of discrimination in the region’s education system, as well as in employment and health care, with Arab Sudanese generally favored over their African countrymen. African tribal leaders have also been excluded from positions in the government and in civil society, they said. “Africans have told me that if they were to call the police, no one would come if the accused were an Arab family,” said Kelly D. Askin, a senior legal officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, a group that is studying discrimination in the region. “If they were to try and send their child to school, an Arab family would get the slot first.” Amnesty International released a report Aug. 9 that said scores of people had been arrested since June in various parts of Darfur for speaking about atrocities to visiting foreign journalists and officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and members of an African Union commission. Sudanese security forces arrested 15 men from the Abu Shouk refugee camp after Powell visited on June 30, according to the Amnesty report. Many of those detained have been students, teachers and community leaders, investigators said. Buthayna Mohamed Ahmed, a teacher and a member of the Sudanese Women’s Union, a professional organization, was arrested July 29 and detained in Nyala, a city in Darfur, apparently because she had advocated peace and the disarmament of the Janjaweed militia, the report said. In January, 10 students were arrested and beaten after holding a symposium on Darfur, according to the report. “If you are in position of respect and power and you challenge what the security says, you become a risk,” said Benedicte Gogeriaux, a researcher for Amnesty International. “For students and teachers and others, if you are viewed as someone who speaks out, you can be arrested, beaten or even worse.” At Oure Cassoni, a sand-swept camp in Chad, just across the border from Sudan, about 135 teachers live among the 17,000 refugees. Many of them said their Arab friends and co-workers had urged them to leave Darfur months ago. “There are many teachers here because the schools were destroyed by the government,” Abdul Jabar, a camp leader, said at a community meeting. “All the teachers and educated people were wanted by the government of Sudan.” Tinjany and other teachers who arrived in February spoke with The Washington Post in an open field in the nearby town of Bahai. The 30 women, all with university degrees, had suddenly been reduced to begging for dates and sorghum, shreds of clothing and bowls of water from Chad’s already desperately poor population. Tinjany said she eventually found work hand-washing laundry and used the money she earned to open a school for 100 Sudanese students. But at the end of July, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, concerned that the coming rains would flood the camps, moved the refugees 17 miles northeast to a remote stretch of desert. Hababa Saleh, 32, a primary school teacher, sat in Tinjany’s tent recently with the other teachers, fiddling with a piece of straw. Hababa has four children, but she had to leave her 6-year-old daughter behind with an aunt when she fled the attacks in Darfur. “I want to see my child,” she said, folding her arms around her body and rocking gently. “We had such a good life. Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I just feel angry.” Sitadour Ali, a preschool teacher with a round face, said she left her village when friends warned her about the rumors of attack. “They told me to run,” she said, looking down. “Sometimes I dream about my students. I dream of them every day.” Ali tries to be optimistic, she said, and has encouraged the teachers to open a school in the new camp. The teachers said they hoped that when the stream of arrivals to the camp slowed, the United Nations would help them start one. “We would just need a few tents for schools, some papers and pens, a blackboard,” Tinjany said. They will teach math, science, reading and writing, she said — and history. “The Sudanese children will want to know why they are living in Chad,” Tinjany said.

washingtonpost.com 19 Aug 2004 Politics of Misery By Jim Hoagland Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A25 The humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan has usefully drawn the world’s attention to the plight of a million or more refugees and to the lifesaving assistance many of them receive from relief organizations. It also spotlights the brutality of a weak national government fighting multiple local rebellions. But the Darfur moment in global consciousness also raises troubling questions about Africa’s tenuous relationship with the outside world. That relationship is now dominated by the politics of misery, a poor base on which to build a partnership or a future. Europeans and Americans pay attention to the continent’s massacres, famines, epidemics and other forms of vast suffering, but heed little else. Policy responses are dominated by emotion and temporary fixes that are left to wither until the next crisis demands fresh bursts of concern and action. The pattern is unlikely to change until Africans themselves take the lead in preventing or resolving the continent’s potential or festering Darfurs. Africa has for too long relied on the uncertain kindness and intentions of outside powers. The continent’s organization of political leaders, the African Union, must take charge of any campaign of intervention or economic sanctions that are needed to protect the dispossessed of Darfur. Since it inspired an initial wave of euphoria and self-congratulation on ending colonial rule, Africa has been typecast as too hard, too remote or too primitive for world power centers to allot it sustained time and energy. It is tempting, then, to see Darfur as tragedy-as-usual. Journalists and relief organizations have thrown around the term genocide to overcome that ingrained Western apathy, even though the conflict is both more complex and more basic than that trigger word suggests. Conflicts in the remote wastelands of the Sudan-Chad frontier region center more often on land and water than on religion or race. But the focus on suffering also inevitably gives a boost to the political fortunes of the rebel organizations fighting the Sudanese government, which has grudgingly accepted African Union cease-fire observers and a small protective force and says it will talk to the rebels. I first directly encountered the politics of misery in the Biafran civil war in Nigeria about three decades ago. Relief organizations that helped the starving Biafrans were denounced and then openly threatened by Nigeria’s central government. They were not accepted as independent, legitimate actors. The same was true of journalists who covered the Biafran cause. Darfur is a measure of the constancy of Africa’s problems. But it also measures the change in the international context of disaster relief. The reach and power of the media and humanitarian organizations have grown enormously. The invisible influence they exert is rarely challenged now, even though aid workers and journalists frequently work in an unacknowledged symbiosis that complicates the habits of diplomacy and statecraft. When he was Britain’s foreign secretary in the 1990s, Douglas Hurd bridled at what he called “the CNN effect.” Why was I so supportive of humanitarian intervention in Bosnia and Iraq, he asked whenever our paths crossed, when there was just as much unpublicized suffering and injustice in remote corners of, say, Sudan? Now that CNN can reach Darfur, I got an updated version of Hurd’s question the other day from an alert reader in Minneapolis named Dan Israel: Didn’t Darfur refugees deserve protection as much as the Kurds and others I championed in the past? “Yes” is the simple answer, Dan. But historical and strategic circumstances argue against the United States leading a humanitarian military intervention in Sudan. Successive administrations took on grave moral responsibility in Iraq by supporting and then betraying the Kurds in their struggle against Saddam Hussein, then supporting that dictator against Iran before going to war against him in 1991 over Kuwait, and then imposing more than a decade of sanctions and airstrikes on Iraq. That responsibility, which grew over two decades, could not be deferred forever. Sudan possesses neither that history nor the strategic position of Iraq in regional politics and conflict. The United States should be ready to play a supporting role in Darfur by helping African Union troops and leaders protect the dispossessed and endangered there. Washington should actively support a diplomatic process that is only beginning, not exhausted as was the case with Iraq. The attention and palliatives that Africa gains through the politics of misery can never atone for the huge costs in life and dignity that the continent’s episodic crises extract. Darfur offers Africa’s leaders the chance to begin to change a continent’s destiny.

ICG 23 Aug 2004 Darfur Deadline: A New International Action Plan One week before the UN Security Council’s Darfur deadline expires, it is clear the international community needs to get much tougher. Failure now would not only mean many tens of thousands more dead, but likely condemn Sudan to more years of war and further spread instability to its neighbours. Khartoum has not met its commitments to neutralise the government-supported Janjaweed militias responsible for the massive human rights violations and humanitarian disaster. The Security Council should authorise the African Union to send a peacekeeping mission to protect civilians. To demonstrate seriousness and help persuade Khartoum to accept it, the Council should also impose an arms embargo, target sanctions against regime officials and ruling-party businesses, and establish an international commission to investigate mass atrocities. ————————————- ICG reports and briefing papers are available on our website: www.icg.org

AP 23 Aug 2004 Sudan Rejects More African Peacekeepers By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 23, 2004 Filed at 8:52 p.m. ET ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Sudan rejected a wider role for African peacekeepers in putting down violence and disarming militiamen in the Darfur region, as Sudanese and rebel officials opened peace talks Monday under heavy international pressure to find a solution to the crisis. The African Union proposed ahead of the talks to send nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, where a pro-government mostly Arab militia known as the Janjaweed is accused of killing tens of thousands of black Africans and pushing more than 1.2 million from their homes. Advertisement Sudan is under international pressure to rein in and disarm the Janjaweed. The United Nations has given the government until the end of August to start doing so or else face possible economic or diplomatic punishment. A Sudanese official rejected the African Union proposal, saying only his government was allowed to keep security in the sprawling Darfur region of western Sudan. “Nobody agreed about that (a peacekeeping force). There was an agreement about a force to protect observers,” Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad said. “The security role is the role of the government of Sudan and its security forces.” He said Sudan might consider an expanded African Union role later. “If there’s a need, it will be discussed.” His comments appeared to be a setback for the international community’s hopes that the African Union could devise an African solution to the 18-month-old conflict that the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and others say amounts to genocide. More than 150 African Union troops from Rwanda are in Darfur protecting some 80 union monitors observing a largely ignored cease-fire, and another 150 soldiers from Nigeria are expected to arrive in coming weeks. The troops are operating under a vague mandate that does not spell out how far they can go to protect targeted civilians. Rwandan officials have said the troops would protect civilians, and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current African Union chairman, offered on Sunday to have the soldiers help disarm rebels while the government reins in the militia. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday that his government was ready to help finance an enlarged African Union force for Darfur. “The government of Sudan may need more assistance from the AU, and it’s our job to facilitate it,” he told reporters while traveling to Sudan for talks. Straw met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail on Monday night, saying he was pleased with the progress Sudan had made in ensuring humanitarian groups’ access to Darfur. Ismail said Sudan was ready to work with the international community and insisted his government had made progress in tackling the humanitarian crisis. He also urged donor nations to fulfill aid pledges to prevent a famine in Darfur. During his two-day visit, Straw was to meet with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir before visiting a relief camp in Darfur. The violence in Darfur is rooted in tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and non-Arab African villagers. Two rebel black African rebel groups launched a revolt in February 2003 over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen. The Janjaweed then unleashed a ferocious campaign of violence against Darfur’s black Africans — who like the Arabs are Muslims — with armed horsemen sweeping into villages, killing and raping. Sudan denies backing the Janjaweed, but many accuse it of using the militiamen to put down the rebels and strengthen the Arab hold on the region. The peace talks in Nigeria are between the Sudanese government and the two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. Going into the negotiations, rebel officials accused the government of failing to provide security and failing to deliver on its promises to disarm the Janjaweed. “The government is yet to put a stop to the activities of the Janjaweed, who are still killing people and attacking people,” said Tacudi Bashi Nyan, a top Justice and Equality Movement delegate. “There is no security in the area. If these things are corrected, then we can have a good atmosphere for the talks. So a lot depends on circumstance.” The U.N. Security Council is due to consider what action to take at the end of August, with options ranging from extending the deadline for another 30 days to imposing punitive measures. Straw’s aides said most council members oppose heavy sanctions. Aid groups and both houses of U.S. Congress have declared the crisis in Sudan “genocide.”

NYT 24 Aug 2004 U.S. Report on Violence in Sudan Finds a ‘Pattern of Atrocities’ By MARC LACEY AIROBI, Kenya, Aug. 24 – A preliminary State Department review of the violence waged in the Darfur region of Sudan has implicated government-backed militias in “a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities,” including murder, torture, rape and ethnic humiliation. The study, based on 257 interviews conducted in refugee settlements in neighboring Chad in the last two weeks of July, is part of the Bush administration’s investigation of whether the killing in Darfur amounts to genocide. The report does not address that question directly but analyzes the chilling testimony of refugees driven from their homes in western Sudan. The study, conducted by State Department officials together with outside legal experts, found that nearly one-third of the refugees interviewed reported hearing racial epithets while under attack, and that nearly 60 percent of them reported witnessed the killing of a family member. Twenty percent of the respondents said they had witnessed a rape and another 25 percent had witnessed beatings. “The purpose of the report is not to come to a determination on genocide,” said a State Department official. “What these guys are doing is collecting firsthand information that would serve as the documentary evidence on whether the legal standard has been met.” Genocide is defined as a calculated effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Congress has already declared that what has happened in Darfur, where more than million black Africans have been driven from their villages by armed Arabs, amounts to genocide. A separate review by the European Union, however, disputed that. The Bush administration is treading carefully on the issue, wanting to pressure the Sudanese government to disarm the militias but without ruining the progress made in peace talks aimed at ending a separate civil war with southern rebels. In the preliminary study, roughly half of the respondents said government soldiers had joined Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, in attacking black African villages. One quarter of the refugees said they were attacked by soldiers alone. Another 17 percent said militias alone attacked them. Based on the testimony, the survey declared that “the primary cleavage defining this conflict appears to be ethnic,” with Arab soldiers and militia attacking non-Arab villagers. “Numerous credible reports point to the use of racial and ethnic epithets by both the Jingaweit and GOS military personnel,” the report said, using an alternative spelling for the militias and an abbreviation for the Government of Sudan. Among the epithets that the interviewers reported were “Kill the slaves” and “We have orders to kill all the blacks.” One refugee reported that a militia member had stated, “We kill all blacks and even kill our cattle when they have black calves.” The report indicated that the extent of the killing in Darfur, which ranges from 30,000 victims to many times more, is difficult to pin down. “Numerous accounts point to mass abductions; the respondents usually do not know the abductees’ fate,” the report said. “A few respondents have indicated personal knowledge of mass executions and gravesites.” The report, dated Aug. 5, is the first part of the genocide review. It will be followed up in the coming weeks by a more thorough review of 1,100 refugee interviews. To conduct them, the surveyors, known as an Atrocities Documentation Team, select each 10th dwelling and conduct their talks without the presence of any outsiders, besides an independent translator.

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