Attacks on Darfur continue despite looming UN deadline by Reuters / SBS World News / UN News 6:23pm 23rd Aug, 2004   30 August 2004    "Attacks on Darfur continue despite looming UN deadline", by Meera Selva in western Darfur. (The independent)    Ceasefire monitors were yesterday investigating claims that Sudanese helicopter gunships attacked a village as a UN deadline calling for an end to the violence loomed. Sudan has until later today to disarm militias drawn from Arab tribes, or face UN penalties. Yet it is clear that Darfur is still at war.    Exactly one month after the UN Security Council passed a resolution obliging the government of Sudan to end the killings in the west of its country, there are still no signs of peace.    The most recent attacks came in the area of Khadjr Abir in west Darfur. Civilians who survived the attacks talk of how they first heard Sudanese aircraft circling overhead, then saw the Janjaweed, as the Arab militia are known, coming over the horizon on camels and horses.    Aid agencies are in no doubt that civilians in Darfur are still being attacked. Lino Bordin, the head of missions for UNHCR in Chad, said: "These are broken promises from Sudan. They said they would try to resolve the situation somehow but that is not happening yet."    The government justifies its military presence by saying it still has to control guerrilla groups in Darfur. Rebels say the government has bombed civilians and is now preparing to launch a final assault on them. Since June 4, 85 villages have been destroyed and 408 people have been killed.    Hundreds of civilians have crossed the border from Sudan into Chad and aid agencies say there are still thousands more hiding inside Sudan. The Sudanese people in Darfur are desperate for help. The African Union is keen to solve the problem but few have any confidence in their ability to get the situation under control.    Um Hashab village lies abandoned in ruins after Thursday's attack on the Sudan Liberation Army, one of two rebel factions waging war against the government in Khartoum.    The charred earth, scorched trees and empty huts in the desert settlement show that the 18-month war continues, despite an 8 April ceasefire.    A 24-hour rebel boycott of peace talks in Nigeria ended late yesterday, with the insurgents returning to negotiations after a protest walkout over allegations that government forces andthe Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed continue to target civilians in the arid region.    "Three days ago they came and dropped bombs on my village," said Adam Salim Abu Bakir, who fled to the nearby Zam Zam refugee camp, 12 miles away from Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. "It is still burning," he said, walking through the ash into the ruins of what he said was his brother's hut.    Workers for an international aid agency operating in Sudan urged the UN Security Council to take tough measures, but it remain unclear what measures can be enforced.    The aid agency, which did not wish to be identified to protect its workers, said: "The ceasefire has not held, and there is still fighting throughout Darfur," said one aid worker.    "Today we have heard chilling reports that villages are still being attacked and burned. Displaced people are still are on the move, fleeing insecurity.    "Armed Janjaweed militias are still present around the camps and continue to harass and terrorise civilians. "Every day, we hear reports that women and girls are being raped, while the government denies the existence of the problem.    "The Council must demonstrate that the last resolution was not simply full of empty threats. A new resolution must implement targeted sanctions immediately on key individuals who have been instrumental in perpetuating the conflict in Darfur."    August 24, 2004    Sudan rejects African troop offer. (Reuters)    Sudan rejected an offer of African troops to disarm rebels in Darfur as peace talks began in Nigeria, insisting it was capable of neutralising both pro-government and rebel militia fighting in the western region. Rebels, in turn, said they would not accept disarmament by Sudanese government forces to end an 18-month-old conflict.    Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo made the proposal ahead of the talks in Abuja, arguing that Sudanese forces were incapable of disarming the rebels without more fighting in Darfur where conflict has already killed up to 50,000 people. But Sudan's top government negotiator Mazjoub al-Khalifa dismissed African Union chairman Obasanjo's deal in which AU troops would disarm rebels while leaving the disarmament of the pro-government Janjaweed militia to Khartoum.    "I don't think there is a need for this," said Mr Khalifa, Sudan's agriculture minister, before talks with negotiators from two Darfur rebel groups. "Simultaneously we will disarm the rebel movements, the Janjaweed and other militia." That idea was swiftly rejected by an official from one of the rebel groups. "There is no way we can let our enemies disarm us. They are still killing us and bombing us," said Abubakar Hamid Nour, coordinator of the Justice and Equality Movement.    The Darfur revolt broke out in February 2003 after years of conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers over scarce resources in Sudan's arid western region. Rebels say Khartoum has armed Arab Janjaweed militia to loot and burn villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Khartoum denies the charge and calls the Janjaweed outlaws.    But the government has intensified efforts to prove it is cracking down on the militia ahead of an August 30 UN Security Council deadline to show progress towards protecting civilians and disarming the Janjaweed or face possible sanctions.    UN envoy Jan Pronk, who will report on progress to secretary-general Kofi Annan, said killing was still going on in Darfur but the government was making efforts to improve security. "There is no mass killing going on in this country," he told BBC radio from Sudan. "There is killing, but there is no reason to believe...that the government is behind those killings."    The fighting has driven more than a million people from their homes, mostly into camps dotted across Darfur and neighbouring Chad.    The United Nations says the conflict has triggered the world's worst humanitarian crisis.    Stepping up the international pressure that has persuaded the government and rebels to the negotiating table, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew to Sudan on Monday.    "I will impress on the government of Sudan the scale of international concern about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the atrocities committed there," Mr Straw told reporters as he prepared to leave for Khartoum. "I will (also) impress on them the need to make full progress in implementing the obligations they have accepted under the UN Security Council resolution."    Rwanda has already sent 155 troops to protect AU officials monitoring a cease-fire between the rebels and the government, and Nigeria is due to send another 150 this week. But Nigeria is already thinking of sending up to 1,500 troops and other African nations have offered to join them.    A previous Darfur peace initiative broke down in July after the rebels demanded as a precondition for talks that the government disarm the Janjaweed. Mr Obasanjo said the AU troops could be key to break this deadlock but tried to allay Sudanese government concerns of foreign meddling. "Any AU troops are meant to complement and support the defence and security agencies of Sudan," said Mr Obasanjo before the start of closed door talks. "The AU force is not a peacekeeping force in the classical meaning of the expression."    The Nigeria talks were also attended by delegates from the second Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), and by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. They came come two days after Khartoum signed an agreement with the United Nations to ensure the voluntary return of refugees and to give Darfuris more say in local government.    23.8.2004    The African Union is brokering peace talks between Sudan's warring government, rebel armies and regional power-brokers, aiming to head off a mounting humanitarian crisis in the Darfur province.    Delegations from the Khartoum government and Darfur's two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, have gathered in Nigerian capital Abuja. They will make their cases before an audience of African leaders, AU officials and the head of the Arab League.    Ahead of the talks AU chairman President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, appealed to Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Beshir's government to disarm the Janjaweed militia and to permit an AU peacekeeping force in Darfur. "The leaders of the government of Sudan itself proclaimed that the Janjaweed were armed by the government. The government armed them so that they could be used against the rebels," he said in a televised interview.    "The government's argument is, if we disarm them before the rebels what will happen? But who is to disarm the rebels, those who armed the Janjaweed? This is where I believe that the effort of the AU will be necessary," he said. "And that is why, in the first instance, we took up our protection force, in addition to the observer team," President Obasanjo said.    Nigeria and Rwanda have made more than 2,000 soldiers available to transform a small African Union ceasefire monitoring already team in Darfur into a genuine peacekeeping force. However Sudan has not yet allowed them to deploy.    The United Nations reports that more than one million people have been driven from their homes in 18 months of fighting and that more than 50,000 have been killed, many of them in Janjaweed raids against unarmed villagers. The results of the talks will be crucial when the UN decides this week whether Sudan has done enough to ensure the safety of refugees adequately to stave off international sanctions.    20 August 2004    Sudan: UN agencies fear new surge of Darfur refugees into Chad. (UN News)    United Nations humanitarian workers fear the continuing violence and insecurity plaguing Sudan's Darfur region could drive another 30,000 people over the border into neighbouring Chad, swelling already crowded refugee camps and straining aid agencies' capacities to care for the new arrivals.    The Director of Operations in Sudan for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Jean-Marie Fakhouri, this week met hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) at a town in West Darfur who said they will flee to Chad as soon as the area's flooded riverbeds dry up unless they receive credible guarantees of their security.    UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond, briefing journalists today at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, said the IDPs told Mr. Fakhouri they are virtual prisoners inside the West Darfur town of Masteri because the notorious Janjaweed militias attack them as soon as they venture out.    As many as 30,000 IDPs have moved into the area around Masteri to escape Janjaweed attacks, as well as fighting between Sudanese Government forces and two Darfur rebel groups. The Janjaweed are accused of murdering civilians, burning homes and destroying cropland.    Mr. Redmond said UNHCR is alarmed that a sudden surge of 30,000 arrivals - already more than 200,000 Sudanese have fled to eastern Chad - "would put a strain on our ability to care for and feed refugees in our camps there."
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