Category: Darfur

The Seattlepi posted a list of excerpts from yesterday’s United Nation report on Darfur. They include:

Today, millions are displaced, at least 200,000 are dead, and conflict and abuse are spilling over the border into Chad.

Making matters worse, humanitarian space continues to shrink, and humanitarian and human rights actors are increasingly targeted.

Killing of civilians remains widespread, including in large-scale attacks. Rape and sexual violence are widespread and systematic. Torture continues.

Arbitrary arrest and detention are common, as is repression of political dissent, and arbitrary restrictions on political freedoms.

Violations of human rights and international humanitarian law have increased by all parties to the conflict since the signing of the DPA (Darfur Peace Agreement).

The deteriorating security situation since the DPA has resulted in tens of thousands of newly displaced – now totaling well over 2 million displaced people in Darfur – and 30,000 more refugees in the camps in Chad, with new arrivals daily.

Today, the conflict is also having a growing impact in the Central African Republic. If the conflict in Darfur is not meaningfully and equitably resolved, bringing peace and security to its people, it could increasingly engulf the region.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for a peacekeeping force along both borders.

Arbitrary arrest and detention in Darfur by government security forces continue.

Individuals reportedly targeted include lawyers, community leaders and others who work on human rights, Sudanese who work for international organizations or who are perceived as cooperating too closely with the international community, individuals who share the predominant ethnicities of various rebel groups, and Sudanese who display opposition political views.

Since September 2006, there has been a wave of arrests of Darfurians in Khartoum.

The human rights team “has also received credible information of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment by National Security and Military Intelligence during attacks and in the treatment of detainees.

The methods used include beatings with whips, sticks and gun butts, prolonged sun exposure, starvation, electrocution, and burning with hot candle wax or molten plastic.

Many detainees are held incommunicado without charge or access to a lawyer.

In the last six months of 2006, more relief workers were killed than in the previous two years combined.

Just during the month of December 2006, 29 humanitarian vehicles were hijacked and 430 humanitarian workers relocated in all three Darfur states.

Witnesses, victims and observers we met repeatedly confirmed joint action between government forces and armed militia in assaulting civilian targets in Darfur.

Arms continue to flow freely, and heavily armed militia continue to operate across the territory of Darfur with impunity.

Rebel abuses of human rights and humanitarian law also continue…Civilians have been targeted in armed rebel attacks, and acts of rape and torture by rebel forces have also been documented.

There have been reports of attacks on aid convoys by rebel forces, putting the populations in these areas in a particularly precarious situation.

The Commission also found credible evidence that, while not widespread and systematic, rebel forces from the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) and SLA (Sudan Liberation Army) were responsible for serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law which may amount to war crimes.

The situation is characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law.

War crimes and crimes against humanity continue across the region…The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the government of the Sudan in concert with Janjaweed militia, and targeting mostly civilians.

Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law.

The mission further concludes that the government of the Sudan has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes.

The government of the Sudan should cooperate fully in the deployment of the proposed U.N./AU peacekeeping/protection force without further delay.

The Security Council should take urgent further action to ensure the effective protection of the civilian population of Darfur, including through the deployment of the proposed U.N./AU peacekeeping/protection force and full cooperation with and support for the work of the International Criminal Court.

The General Assembly of the United Nations should request the compilation of a list of foreign companies that have an adverse impact on the situation of human rights in Darfur.

U.N. member states “should also be prepared to prosecute individuals suspected of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur through the exercise of universal jurisdiction in national courts outside of the Sudan.

A United Nations human rights team has found the government of Sudan culpable in the deaths and violence that continues unabated in Darfur. The team, which was headed by Nobel laureate Jody Williams, called on the UN Security Council to make good on their threats to freeze funds, assets, and economic resources

So far, the international response had been “pathetic”, [Williams] said.

“There are so many hollow threats towards Khartoum, that if I were Khartoum I wouldn’t pay any attention either,” she said.

“It is more than a tragedy. It was after Rwanda that people said ‘never again’, and here we are again… and the world sits by.”

It was actually after the Holocaust that we first said “Never Again,” and yet we’ve had a non-ending parade of mass killings since, with no end in sight. In fact, the one thing that seems to be a universal constant in cases of genocide is a complete lack of response from the international community.

On Monday, two AU soldiers were killed and a third was seriously injured when they were attacked by a militia group in South Darfur. The US State Department released the following message:

The United States condemns the killing of two African Union soldiers in Sudan and calls for a full investigation of the incident. We expect the perpetrators to be found and brought to justice. The soldiers, part of an African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) protection force, were on administrative duty in Graida, Darfur when they were abducted and killed March 5, 2007. A third soldier was injured. Our condolences go to the families of these soldiers, who were serving far from home to protect civilians in Darfur.

The killings bring to 11 the number of AU military personnel who have died since the AMIS force assumed peacekeeping duties in Darfur in western Sudan in 2004. About 7,000 AU forces are assigned to Darfur.

The United States and its international partners support transitioning the AU force to a hybrid UN-AU force of about 20,000 under UN command and control.

According to the Sudan Tribune, the soldiers were abducted and taken to the town of Gereida where they were killed and their vehicle was stolen. The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) said they believed “elements belonging to SLM/A (Sudan Liberation Movement/Army)” were responsible for the attack.

As someone who studies genocide professionally, I can tell you there’s no modern case of ethnic conflict that’s harder to understand, particularly for Westerners, than the current crisis in Darfur. At the onset, the western press was billing the violence as religious based, or merely as spill-over from the years long Civil War in South Sudan. As the government began enlisting the aid of janjaweed militia to fight armed rebels, it became increasingly hard to understand exactly who was fighting who and why.

When Julie Flint and Alex De Waal released Darfur: a short history of a long war, I hoped to find a concise account that put the entire crisis in easy to understand terms for the average reader. And while it is a concise book, and it does follow a logical format, my major concern is that it’s so top heavy with names that it will be too dense for most people to follow.

I will say that the sections on the janjaweed (janjawiid) and the various rebel groups are filled with solid information that’s suitable for anyone with any understanding of the violence in the region. Not only do Flint and De Waal cover the basic ideas that everyone should know, they manage to pack an enormous amount of history and detail into these chapters that I’ll gladly take into the classroom with me.

By comparison, the chapters on the war and the recent conflict come across as rather thin. Even though you’d expect to see a fair amount of detail about the budding humanitarian crisis and the kind of atrocities that led the US to label Darfur a genocide, these are only touched on with a few examples before moving on to other details.

Even as someone who’s been following this crisis since 2002, there were times when I had trouble following the convoluted display of historical facts that Flint and De Waal were attempting to present. While it’s obvious they know their subject, I felt it could have been edited down and presented in a slightly easier to follow format. Nonetheless, I find myself wanting to recommend A short history of a long war, merely because it’s the best book on the subject I’ve found thus far.