What I saw in Darfur

Ban Ki-moon
The Hindu, 17 September

For a solution to the crisis we must deal with all the causes — security, politics, resources, water, humanitarian, and development issues.

Sudanese citizens stage a demonstration in Rome on Sunday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Darfur.

We speak often and easily about Darfur. But what can we say with surety? By conventional short-hand, it is a society at war with itself. Rebels battle the government, the government battles the rebels. Yet the reality is more complicated, and sides are not always clear. Lately, the fighting often as not pits tribe against tribe, warlord against warlord.

Nor is the crisis any longer confined to Darfur. It has spilled over borders, destabilising the region. And Darfur is also an environmental crisis — a conflict that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation, and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.

Complex situation

I have just returned from a week in Darfur and the region. I went to listen to the candid views of its people — Sudanese government officials, villagers displaced by fighting, humanitarian aid workers, the leaders of neighbouring countries. I came away with a clear understanding. There can be no single solution to this crisis. Darfur is a case study in complexity. If peace is to come, it must take into account all the elements that gave rise to the conflict.

Everything I saw and heard convinced me that this is possible. And we must succeed. Outside El Fasher, the largest city in North Darfur, I visited the El Salam camp, sheltering some 45,000 internally displaced people. My heart went out to them. I felt their hopelessness and frustration. I saw children who had not seen life outside the camps. I wanted to give them a sign. I promised that we would do our best to bring peace and help them return to their villages.

We have made a good start. The U.N. Security Council has authorised the deployment of 26,000 multinational peacekeepers, jointly conducted by the United Nations and the African Union (AU).

In going to Darfur, I saw the difficult conditions our forces will encounter — and saw, too, that our logistical preparations are under way. No peacekeeping mission can succeed without a peace to keep. We need to push, hard, for a political settlement as well. Indeed, that was the principal purpose of my trip.

In Khartoum, the government of President Omar al-Bashir renewed its unqualified commitment to support both the peacekeeping mission as well as comprehensive peace talks. We agreed that negotiations should begin in Libya on October 27, under joint AU-U.N. leadership. The government also confirmed its pledge to an immediate cessation of hostilities, as had the rebel groups last month in Arusha. Within hours of my visit, however, there were reports of tensions, clashes and bombings in the northern Darfur town of Haskanita. It is important that both parties exercise restraint and create conditions conducive to the talks.

In dealing with Darfur, we must look beyond it. In Juba, the capital of South Sudan, political leaders worried that Darfur would deflect attention from the peace agreement, signed two years ago, ending a long civil war. As we tend to Darfur, we must not neglect this fragile situation, lest a broader war break out anew and undermine all our efforts.

Any peace must have deep roots, if it is to endure. In Juba and El Fasher, I heard about the importance of listening to the voices of a broad range of civil society — tribal leaders, representatives of independent political movements, women’s and refugee groups, local and national government officials. We need a social contract for peace.

When I met Libya’s leader, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, in his tent in Sirte, he generously offered to host the peace talks and assured me that he would do his utmost to help make them a success. “It is now or never,” Libya’s leader said, emphasising the widespread view that these negotiations must be final.

Remarkable sight

During my visit, I was shown Colonel Qadhafi’s Great Manmade River: hundreds of kilometres of pipeline carrying millions of litres of fresh water from beneath the Sahara. In a region where water is so scarce, this was a remarkable sight. Flying over Lake Chad the previous day — a vast inland sea that has shrunk to one-tenth its original size — it was obvious that this region’s future also depends on supplies of water.

In N’Djamena, Chadian President Idriss Deby told me that, without water, there can be no economic development. And without the prospect of economic advancement, he went on, the quarter-million Darfuri refugees living in the eastern part of his country might never go home. Security and development, he said, go hand-in-hand. In this regard, the international community can play an important role.

All this underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to the conflict in Darfur. Solutions cannot be piece-meal. The crisis grew from many causes. We must deal with all of them — security, politics, resources, water, humanitarian, and development issues.

Dealing with complexity makes our work more challenging and difficult. Yet it is the only path to a lasting solution. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

(Ban Ki-moon is Secretary-General of the United Nations.)

Time's Up

The action President Bush promised on Darfur last month is overdue.

Washington Post, May 20

ONE MONTH ago President Bush said that he was giving the Sudanese government a "last chance" to comply with United Nations orders to end what Mr. Bush again called "genocide" in Darfur. Strongman Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president said, would have "a short period of time" to agree to the full deployment of an international peacekeeping force, end support for militias that have been slaughtering civilians, and allow aid into the region. "If President Bashir does not meet his obligations," Mr. Bush said in a speech delivered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "the United States will act."

The day after Mr. Bush spoke, Mr. Bashir's government launched a new campaign of bombing raids in northern Darfur. Helicopter gunships and Antonov aircraft attacked villages for the next 10 days, according to the United Nations. In the village of Um Rai, the United Nations said, rockets fired by a government helicopter blasted a school. The government painted some of its planes white so that they would be mistaken for U.N. aircraft operating in the region.

Violence is escalating elsewhere in Darfur, driven not only by the government's war with separatist rebels but by an insurgency in neighboring Chad, rebel splinter groups and local grievances. The United Nations has counted another 250,000 displaced persons during the past six months, adding to the more than 2 million refugees, many of them crammed into undersupplied and insecure camps. Meanwhile, the African Union's peacekeeping force is on the verge of breaking down. Rwanda is among several governments threatening to withdraw troops because of the failure of Western governments to provide funding and equipment.

The U.N. plan to turn the African Union force into a joint mission with more than 20,000 troops, finalized last fall, is stalled. Pressured by his former allies in the Arab League and China, Mr. Bashir grudgingly agreed last month to accept 3,000 U.N. troops. But the half-baked compromise for deploying them is so unwieldy -- the U.N. forces will have to operate in Darfur under African Union command -- that few countries have been willing to pledge soldiers. Even if successfully deployed the shrunken force would be far too small to protect civilians.

All this should make it obvious that "the short period of time" that Mr. Bush allowed has run out. The president reluctantly agreed to the delay because U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pleaded for more time to negotiate with Mr. Bashir. But Mr. Ban's own spokesperson called the renewed bombing "indiscriminate" and a violation of international law. In his April 18 speech Mr. Bush mentioned one clear remedy for such attacks: steps "by the international community" to "deny Sudan's government the ability to fly its military aircraft over Darfur." There is support for that idea in the British government; now is the time for Mr. Bush to actively explore it while implementing the unilateral U.S. financial sanctions he outlined. With the United States holding the chair of the U.N. Security Council, now is also the time to introduce the sanctions resolution that Britain and the United States have been discussing. Mr. Bashir has had his "last chance" -- in fact, he has had far too many of them.

Sudanese Police Attack On Aid Workers Tests U.N. Chief's Diplomacy - He Calls It 'Unacceptable' in Letter to Bashir

Colum Lynch
Washington Post, May 20

UNITED NATIONS -- On Jan. 19, a group of 20 international aid workers and peacekeepers celebrated their day off with an afternoon of dining, drinking and dancing at the guesthouse of the private relief agency, the American Refugee Committee, in the town of Nyala, Darfur.

The outing ended in the early evening when Sudanese police and security agents broke into the house, videotaped the attendees -- which included five U.N. workers, representatives of six U.S. and British aid agencies, and African Union peacekeepers -- and then beat them with batons and rifle butts and sexually assaulted at least one female U.N. worker. Locals cheered from the street, and some joined in the assault.

The diners were jailed, subjected to further beatings and accused of illegally consuming alcohol and engaging in immoral behavior, citing the discovery of a Sudanese woman found alone in a room with a man. Those charges were reduced or dropped, but the hosts and a handful of other aid workers were each fined about $100 and charged with failing to obtain a permit to hold a gathering.

The episode -- drawn from interviews and confidential written accounts from U.N. officials and aid workers -- has become a test of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's efforts to use quiet diplomacy with Sudan. Ban, who has never spoken publicly about the case, called the attack "unacceptable" in a private letter to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and urged him to ensure that police were held accountable. But Ban's attempt to parlay his new relationship with Bashir -- cultivated during a series of talks over U.N.-brokered peacekeeping -- has yielded little progress in this case.

Bashir last month dismissed Ban's appeal, warning in a confidential letter that U.N. staff members would be held accountable for violating Sudanese laws and suggesting that they receive special training in "conduct and discipline" to ensure they obey those laws. "Accordingly, persons working in Sudan, regardless of their status or assignments, are expected to observe and respect the customary laws of the communities in which they serve."

Bashir and other Sudanese officials have said the episode underscores how foreign aid workers trample on Sudan's Islamic traditions, and Sudanese religious leaders have organized demonstrations to protest the outsiders' behavior.

For the United Nations, the incident marked the most flagrant act of violence by government forces against international personnel in Darfur. A U.N. board of inquiry into the incident -- which involved relief workers from Oxfam International, World Vision International and the International Rescue Committee -- recently concluded that Sudan violated provisions of the status of forces agreement governing the U.N. presence in Sudan.

"The humanitarian community feels, rightly, doubly victimized in this incident. Those concerned were not only assaulted, but then themselves charged with a crime," John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told the U.N. Security Council last month. "Those who have come to help the population are now themselves targets."

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when Darfurian rebels took up arms against the Islamic government, claiming that they represented the region's disadvantaged black villagers. In response, Khartoum armed and organized Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, and supported a bloody counterinsurgency that led to the destruction of hundreds of villages, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the flight of more than 2.5 million from their homes.

Conditions improved in 2004 after relief workers flooded into Darfur, establishing a massive aid operation that currently costs $800 million a year. Today, more than 13,000 relief workers, including nearly 900 foreigners, deliver food, medicine and other life-saving services to more than 3 million people.

But security has deteriorated sharply since May 2006, when Khartoum and one of Darfur's chief rebel factions, the Sudan Liberation Army, signed the Darfur Peace Accord -- a pact that was rejected by several rebel factions and most of Darfur's population, and which led to the splintering of Darfurian rebel groups.

The Nyala incident occurred at a time when attacks against foreigner aid workers are soaring in Darfur. Relief workers have suffered nearly daily attacks, including carjackings and assaults that have left more than 13 dead over the past year and made huge swaths of Darfur off limits for aid workers. Last month, armed groups hijacked 16 humanitarian vehicles, attacked eight humanitarian compounds, ambushed and looted seven relief convoys, and shot four aid workers.

The British relief agency Oxfam International, France's Action Against Hunger and the U.N. World Food Program withdrew in December from Darfur's largest camp for displaced persons, in Gereida, after armed groups attacked six humanitarian compounds on Dec. 18, stealing vehicles, cash and communications equipment, subjecting aid workers to beatings and mock executions, and raping one woman. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the only international aid organization remaining in the camp, where 130,000 people are settled.

"It is getting to the point now where the humanitarian aid response is at risk of breaking down," said Alun McDonald, a Khartoum-based spokesman for the British aid agency Oxfam International. "We used to know who to do deal with; we used to know who to phone up we were coming through their areas. Now we don't know."

Some aid workers have expressed concern that the U.N. leadership has not confronted the Sudanese government more forcefully. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, made little fuss about Sudan's expulsion in December of former U.N. Special Representative Jan Pronk. A replacement has not been named.

The United Nations has not acknowledged Sudan's expulsion of the three other U.N. officials over the past six months, including the top-ranking security official who was given 48 hours to leave the country after Sudanese officials protested his circulation of a memo warning aid workers of possible al-Qaeda attacks.

U.N. officials say that while Ban has not gone public, he has been uncommonly tough with Bashir in private. In his confidential Feb. 23 letter to Bashir, Ban expressed "deep concern" over the January attack. "I view this incident as serious and unacceptable and I trust that your government will ensure that the perpetrators are held accountable."

Ban urged Bashir to pledge "his own personal support" to ensure cooperation with a U.N. board of inquiry looking into the incident. He also pressed Bashir to order a judicial review of the case in Khartoum to "send the message that your government will not tolerate attacks against relief workers by its own officials or anyone else."

In his reply, Bashir made no mention of the police abuses and told Ban to drop the matter. "I suggest that episodes of similar nature be tackled at the appropriate administrative level so that you and I devote our time and energies to reinvigorate the peace process."

Darfur: need for urgent action

John Holmes
The Hindu, 26 April

Humanitarian action can never be a substitute for a political solution. The people of Darfur need it now more than ever.

THREE YEARS ago this April, my predecessor first brought Darfur to the attention of the United Nations Security Council. And now this April, I too have gone before the Security Council to brief them on the ongoing tragedy of Darfur following my recent mission to the region. The cost of inaction continues to be paid in countless thousands of lives lost. How many more Aprils can the people of Darfur endure?

In three years, the number of people dependent on an increasingly fragile humanitarian lifeline in Darfur has quadrupled from one million to nearly four million people. In recent months, access and safety for the thousands of aid workers seeking to assist them have declined precipitously. How can we sustain the world's largest humanitarian operation when needs are growing but our ability to help is severely curtailed?

A quick look at the numbers shows how much we have achieved in the last three years — and how much is at risk should bureaucracy and intimidation make humanitarian work untenable.

In April 2004 when the humanitarian operation in Darfur began to kick into high gear, we had just over 200 aid workers on the ground assisting 350,000 people displaced by the conflict. Today 13,000 aid workers, primarily Sudanese, are assisting almost four times that number. Global malnutrition has been halved since mid-2004, and mortality rates slashed to well below emergency threshold rates.

Unending problems

But these lifesaving gains could only too quickly evaporate. The problems in Darfur continue unabated and have spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic. Some 420,000 people in Darfur have been displaced from their homes since last May, despite the signing of a peace agreement then, bringing the total number of people displaced to over two million — one-third of Darfur's population. Rape and other sexual attacks continue, committed by all sides in a climate of total impunity. Malnutrition rates have begun to climb again, particularly outside the camps in remote, insecure areas.

Our ability to reach people in need is meanwhile shrinking to dangerously low levels. We judge that only half of those affected by the conflict in Darfur are now regularly receiving clean water and primary health care. Fewer than 40 per cent receive sanitation services. Worse still, at any one time, nearly one in four people in need can no longer be reached with any assistance, meaning that some 900,000 people are out of reach of the humanitarian lifeline.

Aid workers are under attack as well, in direct contravention to the Geneva Conventions. Between June and December 2006, 12 relief workers were killed, more than in the previous two years combined. Last year, 120 humanitarian vehicles were hijacked. Hundreds of thousands of civilians can be cut off from life-sustaining help if and when humanitarian organisations withdraw from areas where their staff have been attacked. All the parties to the conflict share responsibility for these attacks.

Meanwhile, a stream of government red tape has severely hampered aid operations, sapped morale, and limited freedom of movement. A government which should obviously be helping those who are saving the lives of its own citizens has often seemed little interested in doing so.

So what is to be done? First, there should be an immediate end to all attacks against civilians by all sides in the conflict, be they government-backed militias, rebel forces or other conflict parties.

Last week (April 16), the Government of Sudan indicated its acceptance of the second United Nations support package designed to strengthen the African Union's (AU) peacekeeping efforts in Darfur. We welcome this and all steps to increase protection for civilians in Darfur. But speedy, effective implementation remains of the essence, and requires Khartoum's full, expeditious cooperation. The people of Darfur can brook no further delay in the deployment of the full U.N.-AU hybrid peacekeeping force.

Second, we need safe, unimpeded access so that humanitarians can reach all those in need. One welcome note from my recent mission to Sudan was the signing of a Joint Communiqué in which Khartoum re-affirmed and extended its 2004 pledge to ease up on visa, customs, and other requirements. Specific promises have been made. I intend to keep a close eye on their implementation.

Finally, let us not forget that humanitarian action, no matter how vitally needed, can never be a substitute for a political solution. We simply cannot sustain this massive aid effort for years at a stretch. Three years into this conflict, the people of Darfur need a political solution now more than ever.

I urge all parties to the conflict to support the efforts of the Special Envoys from the AU and the U.N. in ensuring adherence to an immediate ceasefire, and getting all the parties around the negotiating table to reach a lasting peace settlement.

"April is the cruellest month," wrote T.S. Eliot. I fervently hope that next April, still less the April after that, I will not be standing before the Security Council with fresh news of still more death and displacement in Darfur. It's time to stop this disastrous conflict. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

(The writer is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.)

Why Africa now relies on Arnold Schwarzenegger

Mary Riddell

Popcorn politics is doing more good for Africa than all the talk coming out of Davos.

I ONCE went for dinner at the British embassy in Khartoum. The walls were hung with oil paintings, the gin was iced, and the velvety interior suggested a Belgravia drawing room. Not far away, women held bone-thin babies who would die soon. Britain's then ambassador to Sudan knew little of such scenes. He did not seem to get out much. No doubt communications have improved.

No one need to move far now to witness desolation. Hollywood loves Africa and almost every multiplex is showing one or more lament on civil war. Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland, the two latest examples, have gathered Oscar nominations and plaudits for their assault on Western consciences. Both also carry an unmeant subtext of exploitation.

Like The Constant Gardener, they depict an Africa whose job it is to kill, to suffer, and to supply a backdrop for a white man's odyssey. The Last King, offers the tale of a Scottish doctor caught up with Idi Amin. Blood Diamond, set in Sierra Leone, is the vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio and enough military hardware to provoke envy in any ordnance-starved general in today's Afghanistan.

Still, there is much to be said for the popcorn branch of foreign policy. Blood Diamond has sent a shiver through a gem industry that has offered Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez $10,000 each for charity to flaunt sparkling rings and repel any public-relations disaster. Although Sierra Leone, like most exporters, has cleaned up its trade, conflict diamonds worth $23 million recently reached international markets from the Ivory Coast. Consumers will ask more questions and Global Witness, the charity that publicises the link between natural resources and war, is justly proud.

Tony Blair must have wished, as he spoke in Davos on Saturday, that he had a film star's power. At the World Economic Forum, he reported progress since Gleneagles and placed the continent at the top of his agenda. On Darfur, there was no good news. It was, Mr. Blair said, "a scandal, not a problem."

An estimated 400,000 have died there and thousands more face genocide. Aid agencies are on the brink of leaving after the murder and rape of staff by the government-backed janjaweed militia and rebel groups. Moves to get U.N. peacekeepers in to help the existing African Union contingent have been frustrated by President Bashir, who has reportedly bombed villages in the last few days. The response is international silence. No one is queuing to make a film about Darfur.

Sudan's leader does not take kindly to scrutiny. Mr. Blair was uncertain, on the eve of his Davos speech, about how tough to sound. Is this the moment for the West to tell Mr. Bashir that he must make good his promises or face the consequences? Mr. Blair's eventual call for better peacekeeping institutions will do little for those whose lives are measured in days or hours.

In September last year, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law forbidding the State's investment, including its huge public pension funds, in firms dealing with Sudan.

Last week, German technologies group Siemens pulled out of Sudan, citing moral grounds. The British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recently urged British businesses to do likewise and Sudan Divestment U.K. is targeting firms such as Rolls Royce. When I rang the company to ask if it was planning to withdraw, it emailed back to say that its exports were "fully consistent with the relevant export control regulations and help the development of Sudan, so that it has the ability to meet the economic and social needs of its population." I took that as a "no."

When Hollywood and industry have such sway, world leaders should cringe at their own lack of progress in Darfur. Despite U.S. and British oratory, and the advocacy of charities such as Oxfam, the blood still flows, the bombs still fall, and Europe looks the other way.

Europe must lead the way in demanding a no-fly zone and an arms embargo. Sanctions are vital to a political solution and getting more peacekeepers on the ground. But when politicians prevaricate, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has hit the ground dithering, there is also a case for pressuring big business.

A region is close to annihilation at the hands of violence and inertia, the twin agents of genocide. In Darfur, there may soon be no lucky people left. If nothing is done, then in 10 years' time, a film crew might resurrect its ghost villages and deserted farms. And people of good conscience and short memory will buy their tickets and vow to change the world as they weep over what need not have been.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Africa / China and Darfur: The Genocide Olympics?

Washington Post, December 14

NEWSPAPERS HAVE been running harrowing ads on the genocide in Darfur. They feature images of suffering coupled with appeals to President Bush to halt it. But the key to this tragedy lies not in the killing fields of western Sudan nor even in the White House. It is to be found instead in Khartoum, Sudan's booming capital. The sleek new office towers sprouting up in the commercial district explain why Sudan's government has resisted American and European pressure to end the genocide. But they also show why Arabs and Asians -- and especially the Chinese -- have the power to influence Sudan and the responsibility to use it.

Sudan has been subject to U.S. sanctions since the 1990s. It has been condemned in numerous United Nations resolutions, and Western firms that do business there risk alienating customers and investors. And yet a $4 billion complex of offices, parks and hotels is rising at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles, complete with the new sail-shaped headquarters of Petrodar, a Chinese-Malaysian-United Arab Emirates oil partnership. Thanks to these investors, along with Kuwaitis, Saudis, Indians and Pakistanis, Sudan's petro-economy is flourishing. This year the economy is expected to grow 13 percent on the back of oil exports, most of which go to China.

So Sudan's government feels it can ignore Western revulsion at genocide because it has no need of Western money. But the bigger question is why China, along with Sudan's other Arab and Asian partners, feels free to trample on basic standards of decency. China's economic model rests on access to Western markets -- access that can't be assured given popular resentment of China's growing trade surplus. Equally, China seeks acceptance at the world's diplomatic top table -- and this cause is unlikely to be advanced if China is perceived to be complicit in genocide. Imagine the newspaper ads leading up to the Beijing Games in 2008: Human rights campaigners will call on the world to boycott the Genocide Olympics.

China recently demonstrated its leverage over Sudan, prevailing upon the regime to allow the embattled African Union force in Darfur to be supplied with better equipment. But China should join with the United States and others to broker a cease-fire in Darfur, without which even a beefed-up peace monitoring force cannot save civilians. In recent weeks, fighting has intensified in the region and spilled into neighboring Chad; refugees are fleeing to the Central African Republic, which is embroiled in its own internal conflict. A regional catastrophe is brewing that could be worse even than the past three years of killing.

This crisis isn't going to fix itself. Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir rivals Iran's leader in genocide denial: He recently accused aid workers of exaggerating Darfur's crisis to preserve their jobs. Doesn't China feel qualms about propping up this ogre? Perhaps Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who is in China along with a team of Cabinet officials and the Fed chairman today and tomorrow, might trouble to ask that question.

Africa / Central African Republic

On the Run as War Crosses Another Line in Africa

December 10, NYT

LYDIA POLGREEN

KALANDAO, Central African Republic — The rumble of engines, any engines, is the signal for the villagers here to flee, leaving behind smoldering pots of wild roots and leaves, a meager afternoon meal.

Their haste was so great on a recent afternoon that they left something else behind — a little girl in a filthy white shirt. She wailed as she sat, utterly alone, struggling to stand, much less flee, on slender, uncertain legs.

The Central African Republic — so important as a potential bulwark against the chaos and misery of its neighbors in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan — is being dragged right into the dangerous and ever-expanding conflict that has begun to engulf central Africa.

So porous are its borders and ungoverned are parts of its territory that foreign rebels are using the Central African Republic as a staging ground to mount attacks over the border, spreading what the United Nations has called the world’s “gravest humanitarian crisis.”

The situation is so bad in some places that 50,000 residents have fled the Central African Republic to find refuge in Chad, of all places, while starvation threatens hundreds of thousands who remain.

“This is the soft belly of Africa,” said Jerome Chevallier, a World Bank official who is trying to help stabilize the Central African Republic. “It has little protection from whatever might strike it.”

A visit to Kalandao underscores the point. The residents here had fled their country’s own army, which has been burning villages to smoke out a homegrown rebel movement bent on overthrowing the government. Once the villagers, including the girl’s family, realized the approaching vehicles were from the United Nations World Food Program, they trickled back to tell their story.

“We are living in the bush like animals,” Leontine Makanzi said. “Our children are dying. We are eating nothing. We have no security.” Central African Republic, one of the poorest places on earth, has suffered through a series of coups and countercoups in the last decade and sits almost at the bottom of the United Nations development index. In few places do people live so short a lifespan, bury so many of their young children or succumb to more treatable disease.

But its vulnerability has only grown in recent months. On its northeast border with Sudan, Chadian rebels supported by the Sudanese government have built a base, according to government officials and diplomats, to bolster their bid to overthrow Chad’s president, Idriss Déby. Now the Central African Republic government says these foreign fighters have teamed up with local rebels to overthrow it as well, making it increasingly hard to separate one conflict in the region from another.

“The world must act now to prevent an even graver crisis here,” said Jean-Charles Dei, country director for the United Nations World Food Program, which is feeding 250,000 people in the Central African Republic, one of just a handful of organizations offering any aid at all here. “The international community must act to protect these vulnerable people or risk that they will be consumed by the crisis in the region.”

To stem the tide of destruction in this morass of cross-border enmity, the United Nations is examining the possibility of placing international troops to protect the borders of Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic.

The hope is to avoid a broad, multicountry conflict like the one that swept Congo after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko. That war, which followed the Rwandan genocide and pulled in fighters from Uganda, Angola and Rwanda, among others, killed four million people, mostly from hunger and disease, and its aftermath continues to kill 1,200 people a day.

“As long as the problem of Darfur is not solved, you will not have peace in Ndjamena or Bangui,” said Lamine Cisse, the top United Nations official in Central African Republic, referring to the capitals of Chad and Central African Republic. “The conflicts are all linked, and solving one requires solving all.”

The Central African Republic is a former French colony of four million people sprinkled in tiny villages across a tangle of jungle about the size of Texas. Across generous swaths of fertile soil, villagers scrape together a living using techniques as old as the Bible — hoes, water cans, human muscle and bone. The labor required for mere survival is so strenuous that the most common operation performed by doctors at a rural hospital in the northwest is for hernias.

On a continent where cellphone towers and fiber optic cables are finally snaking their way across the land, much of life here is lived as though the last few centuries never happened — as though the march of history halted at its wild frontiers.

“It is as though the whole world has simply forgotten these people,” said Sister Desiree, a Burundian nun working at a Roman Catholic mission in Ndim, a small provincial town in northwest Central African Republic. “I always ask myself, why does no one besides us come to help these people? But I find no answer.”

The four nuns at the mission, along with four nurses, some teachers and a handful of others, run a school, clinic and feeding program in Ndim, handing out food donated by the World Food Program.

Most of the people in Ndim are not actually displaced, but the isolation the conflict has caused, as well as the general poverty of the area, has left them perpetually malnourished and hungry.

“Outside of a famine situation I have never seen people in such terrible shape,” said Jean-Pierre Cebron, the top official for the World Food Program for the central African region. “In terms of weight, in terms of height, in terms of health, the population is really in rough condition.”

Hundreds of families lined up at the mission to receive biweekly rations — a few scoops of fortified flour, lentils, salt and sugar. Some were so poor they did not even have bowls — they used ragged pieces of cloth to carry their food home.

In neighboring countries, aid organizations feed, clothe and shelter the impoverished, but here there are comparatively few people to help. Here in the northwest, Doctors Without Borders; Coopi, an Italian aid organization; the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program are trying to help the estimated 150,000 displaced, but they are overstretched and hampered in their work by security problems and government constraints.

Aid organizations in Paoua, a provincial town at the epicenter of the crisis in the northwest, were instructed by the military in November to suspend activities for security reasons, so more than 50 tons of food for displaced people sat in a warehouse, undistributed.

Just outside of Paoua, the remains of village after village lie in charred heaps. In one such village, behind the destroyed mud huts, deep in the forest, villagers were living beneath plastic tarps a mile away from their homes.

“They came last month to give us these shelters, but they don’t come again,” said Pauline Koibe, who had been living in the open, sleeping under trees, since January. “It is like they have forgotten us.”

People here refer only elliptically to the perpetual crises that have enveloped their nation. Its troubles are referred to as “les événements,” or the events. It is a passive phrase that carries the inevitability and randomness of a tornado or an earthquake — an unpredictable, destructive happening that has no author and for which no one really can be blamed.

The problems began even before independence, when the man who should have been the country’s first president, Barthélémy Boganda, died in a mysterious plane crash in 1958. They continued with the rise of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a ruthless military dictator whose excesses were rumored to include cannibalism. He declared himself emperor of this tiny country in 1976, crowning himself in a lavish ceremony that cost $20 million.

Democracy arrived in the 1990s, with the election of Ange-Félix Patassé, but his rule was marked by corruption and mismanagement that only deepened the despair. He was overthrown in 2002 by Gen. François Bozizé, who eventually was elected president in 2005 in an election that was judged free and fair by international observers.

The rebellion in the northeast is led by allies of Mr. Patassé, the former president, along with Chadian rebels, who seek to overthrow Chad’s president, a close ally of Mr. Bozizé.

Like so many countries in Africa, the Central African Republic has the potential of vast wealth in its natural resources — diamonds, timber, hydroelectric power and commercial farming. But over the years its economy has shriveled. A decade ago there were more than 200 private companies working here, according to the World Bank. Today, only about 20 remain. In the past decade, disease and hunger have slashed life expectancy by 10 years, to about 40.

“Since independence our country has never known stability,” said Lea Koyassoum-Doumta, a top adviser to the government. “We have plenty of problems of our own. We don’t need these problems from outside, in Sudan and Chad, making things worse for us. We need peace so we can finally have some development and progress.”

Central African Republic History & Statistics

GEOGRAPHY

Location: landlocked country in central Africa. Boundaries: Chad to N, Sudan to E, Zaire, Congo to S, Cameroon to W. Total land area: 240,533 sq. mi. (622,980 sq km). Coastline: none. Comparative area: slightly smaller than Texas. Land use: 3% arable land; negl. % permanent crops; 97% other. Major cities: (1988) Bangui (capital) 451,690; Berbérati 41,891; Bouar 39,676.

PEOPLE

Population: 3,683,538 (July 2003 est.). Nationality: noun—Central African(s); adjective— Central African. Ethnic groups: 33% Baya, 27% Banda, 13% Mandija, 10% Sara, 7% Mboum, 4% M'Baka; 2% other. Languages: French (official), Sangho (lingua franca and national language), tribal languages. Religions: 35% indigenous beliefs, 25% Protestant, 25% Roman Catholic, 15% Muslim; indigenous beliefs and practices strongly influence Christian majority.

GOVERNMENT

Type: republic. Independence: Aug. 13, 1960 (from France). Constitution: Adopted Jan. 7, 1995. National holiday: Republic Day, Dec. 1. Heads of Government: François Bozize, head of state (since March 31, 2003); Abel Goumba, prime minister (since March 31, 2003). Structure: executive; unicameral legislature; judiciary.

ECONOMY

Monetary unit: Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) franc. Budget: (1994 est.) income: $638 mil.; expend.: $1.9 bil. GDP: $4.7 bil., $1,300 per capita (2002 est.). Chief crops: cotton, coffee, tobacco. Natural resources: diamonds, uranium, timber, gold, oil. Major industries: sawmills, breweries, diamond mining. Labor force: 775,413 (1986 est.); 85% agriculture, 9% commerce and services. Exports: $134 mil. (f.o.b., 2002 est.); diamonds, timber, cotton, coffee, tobacco. Imports: $102 mil. (f.o.b., 2002); food, textiles, petroleum products, machinery, electrical equipment, motor vehicles. Major trading partners: exports: 53% Belgium, Kazakhstan, Spain; imports: 26% France, Cameroon, Spain.

A landlocked country in Africa's central region, the Central African Republic is one of the least-developed countries in the world. Most of its people are farmers, and the nation has little manufacturing, few reliable roads, and no railroad. Europeans first came to the area in the early 1800's in their search for slaves, but it was not until 1889 that the French established an outpost as the current capital city of Bangui. The region was organized as the territory of Ubangi-Shari five years later. In 1910 it was incorporated into French Equitorial Africa along with what are now the countries of Chad, the Congo, and Gabon.

The country was granted internal selfgovernment by the French under its present name in 1958 and became a member of the French Overseas Community. Independence was achieved on Aug. 13, 1960. The first prime minister, Barthelemy Boganda, was killed in an airplane crash in 1959 and was succeeded by his nephew, David Dacko. Dacko was elected to a seven-year term in January 1964, but an army coup in 1966 overthrew his government. The head of the army, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, was installed as president. Named president for life in 1972, in 1976 Bokassa declared himself emperor and changed the name of the country to the Central African Empire.

Dacko returned to power in 1979, however, and Bokassa went into exile in France. The name of the country was changed back to the Central African Republic. A multiparty political system was reinstated in March 1981, but army officers threw Dacko out of office again six months later and banned all political parties. Opposition parties were legalized in 1991, and Bokassa was released shortly before elections in 1993, elections that made Ange Félix Patassé president. He tried to reduce the army's power but has been met with several rebellions requiring the intervention of peacekeepers from neighboring states. After surviving numerous coup attempts, Patassé was overturned in March 2003 by fired army head General Francois Bozize who suspended the constitution and proclaimed himself president.

From THE NEW YORK TIMES ALMANAC 2004

Africa / Genocide in Darfur - How the Horror Began

By Eric Reeves
Sudan Tribune (www.sudantribune.com), Saturday 3 September 2005.

In one of the most remote places in Africa, an insurgency began unnoticed under the shadow of the war in Iraq in 2003, killing 350,000 to 400,000 people in 29 months by means of violence, malnutrition, and disease in the first genocidal rampage of the 21st century.

The insurgeny began virtually unnoticed in February 2003; it has, over the past two years, precipitated the first great episode of genocidal destruction in the 21st century. The victims are the non-Arab or African tribal groups of Darfur, primarily the Fur, the Massaleit, and the Zaghawa, but also the Tunjur, the Birgid, the Dajo, and others. These people have long been politically and economically marginalized, and in recent years the National Islamic Front regime, based in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, has refused to control increasingly violent Arab militia raids of African villages in Darfur. Competition between Arab and African tribal groups over the scarce primary resources in Darfur-arable land and water-has been exacerbated by advancing desertification throughout the Sahel region.

But it was Khartoum’s failure to respond to the desperate economic needs of this huge region (it is the size of France), the decayed judiciary, the lack of political representation, and in particular the growing impunity on the part of Arab raiders that gave rise to the full-scale armed conflict.
Not directly related to the 21-year civil conflict that recently formally ended in southern Sudan-a historic agreement was signed in Nairobi on January 9, 2005-Darfur’s insurgency found early success against Khartoum’s regular military forces. But this success had a terrible consequence: The regime in Khartoum switched from a military strategy of direct confrontation to a policy of systematically destroying the African tribal groups perceived as the civilian base of support for the insurgents. The primary instrument in this new policy has been the Janjaweed, a loosely organized Arab militia force of perhaps 20,000 men, primarily on horse and camel.

This force is dramatically different in character, military strength, and purpose from previous militia raiders. Khartoum ensured that the Janjaweed were extremely heavily armed, well-supplied, and actively coordinating with the regime’s regular ground and air forces. Indeed, Human Rights Watch obtained in July 2004 confidential Sudanese government documents that directly implicate high-ranking government officials in a policy of support for the Janjaweed. "It’s absurd to distinguish between the Sudanese government forces and the militias-they are one," says Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. "These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it’s been specifically supported by Sudan government officials."

Evidence of genocide

The nature of the attacks on African villages in Darfur-as reported by numerous human rights groups-makes clear the Khartoum regime’s genocidal intent. Janjaweed assaults, typically conducted in concert with Khartoum’s regular military forces (including helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers), have been comprehensively destructive of both human life and livelihood: men and boys killed en masse, women and girls raped or abducted, and all means of agricultural production destroyed. Thriving villages have had buildings burned, water sources poisoned, irrigation systems torn up, food and seed stocks destroyed, and fruit trees cut down. Cattle have been looted on a massive scale, and most of those not looted have died from lack of water and food, as people flee into the inhospitable wastes of this arid region.

According to Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide-to which the US and all current members of the UN Security Council are party-genocide encompasses not only the deliberate killing of members of a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such," but also "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The latter is what we have seen in Darfur.

As a result, agricultural production has largely come to a halt in Darfur, and the United Nations estimates that in the very near future 3.5 million people will be in urgent need of food assistance (the total population of Darfur is approximately 6.5 million). Moreover, there is no sign that the current planting season will yield a significant fall harvest. Huge civilian populations-well over two million people-will be dependent on food aid for the foreseeable future. Many of these people will die in what has become genocide by attrition.

The humanitarian crisis The current rainy season in Darfur is already creating immense logistical problems for humanitarian aid groups, as it did last summer. Darfur is one of the most remote places in Africa, and quite distant from navigable bodies of water. Both food and critical nonfood items (medical supplies, shelter, equipment for clean water) must be transported over land by truck or (much more expensively) flown into the regional capitals of the three Darfur states.

Though humanitarian organizations are performing heroically under extremely difficult conditions, it’s clear that there is a deadly mismatch between humanitarian capacity and human need. As the rains sever various transport corridors and insecurity closes others, many villages and communities are becoming inaccessible. This occurs against the backdrop of a traditional "hunger gap"-the period between spring planting and fall harvest.

Moreover, the overcrowded camps for displaced persons-now the only place of refuge for more than two million people-face serious shortages of sanitary facilities. The threat of waterborne disease is becoming acute, as many of the camps are little more than open sewers. Outbreaks of cholera or dysentery could quickly claim tens of thousands of lives in addition to those already claimed by violence, disease, and malnutrition. Extant data suggest that between 350,000 and 400,000 have perished during the past 29 months.

A recent UN mortality assessment indicates that more than 6,000 continue to die every month, and Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, has warned that the toll may climb to 100,000 per month if insecurity forces humanitarian organizations to withdraw from Darfur. Banditry, hijacking of humanitarian convoys, and attacks on humanitarian workers have grown relentlessly in recent months, even as there has been a decline in major conflict between Khartoum’s regular forces and the insurgency groups.

Peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, have done nothing to rein in the Janjaweed militia, and a small African Union monitoring force on the ground has had only marginal effect in addressing civilian and humanitarian security needs. The death total in Darfur’s genocide may reach that of Rwanda’s by year’s end.

Racism and Islamism in Khartoum

The National Islamic Front (which has attempted to rename itself innocuously as the "National Congress Party") is essentially unchanged since it seized power from a democratically elected government in a 1989 military coup, deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising peace process since independence in 1956. With the exception of Islamist ideologue Hassan El-Turabi-the mastermind of the 1989 coup who split with his former allies and is no longer part of the government-the same brutal men still control the NIF 16 years after it seized power. Field Marshal Omer El-Beshir retains the presidency, and Ali Osman Taha-arguably the most powerful man in Sudan-serves as vice president and controls the terrifyingly efficient security services. Nafie Ali Nafie, Gutbi Al-Mahdi, and other longtime members of the NIF serve in various advisory capacities. And Major General Saleh Abdallah Gosh, recently flown to Washington by the CIA, retains control of the Mukhabarat (Sudan’s intelligence and security service) even as he is among those members of the NIF indicted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

These are the men who settled on a genocidal response to the insurgency movements that emerged in Darfur in early 2003. But the NIF’S history of genocide goes back much further than the current catastrophe in Darfur. Animated by a radical Islamism and sense of Arab racial superiority, the movement engaged in genocide almost from the time it seized power. A year ago, seasoned Sudan watcher Alex de Waal of the British group Justice Africa wrote for the London Review of Books what remains one of the best overviews of the Darfur crisis. In the piece, he observed that genocide in Darfur is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad in the Nuba Mountains was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power; it is genocide by force of habit. As part of a ghastly jihad, the NIF conducted relentless military assaults on civilians and enforced a humanitarian aid embargo that lasted more than a decade.

The same men ordered the scorched-earth clearances of the oil regions in southern Sudan to provide security for the operations of international oil companies. The actions of oil companies from Canada, Sweden, Austria, China, Malaysia, and India-directly supporting the NIF regime-constitute one of the most shameful episodes in the long and terrible history of resource extraction in Africa.

The result of these policies was that between 1989 and 2002 many hundreds of thousands of Sudanese were either killed or displaced. In the Nuba Mountains and the oil regions of southern Sudan, as in Darfur, the NIF regime settled upon a deliberate policy of human destruction, targeting ethnically African populations that had rebelled against, or were victims of, decades of political and economic marginalization.

The July 9 inauguration of a new Sudanese "government of national unity" (GNU) has appropriately received a good deal of news coverage. (The GNU represents the culmination of an arduous peace process going back almost a decade and the formal end to war in southern Sudan. Perhaps the most destructive civil conflict since World War II and one of the longest wars in Africa’s history, it saw the Christian and animist South pitted against the Muslim, Arab-speaking North. As many as 2.5 million people have died since the second phase of the civil war began in 1983-and likely more than four million if we consider its earlier phase (1955-72). More than five million people were displaced by the war-Sudan has the world’s largest population of internally displaced persons-and southern Sudan was utterly devastated.)
John Garang, the 60-year-old guerilla leader of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, was killed in a helicopter crash on July 30, just three weeks after being inaugurated as "First Vice President" in the GNU. One of the few elder southern statesman who believed in a united Sudan, Garang was pivotal in securing the peace agreement that ended the civil war and was a symbol of hope for many in the south. It was assumed in many quarters that Garang-as someone long sympathetic to the cause of Sudan’s marginalized peoples-would use his new position to help end genocide in Darfur. His death has raised fears about the newly established peace, with some southerners claiming the Sudanese government, dominated by their northern opponents, might have played a role in it. A seven-member team is investigating the crash and is scheduled to present its findings by early September.

Who is dying

Darfur’s prewar population of approximately 6.5 million was perhaps 60 to 65 percent non-Arab-some four million "Africans." In fact, all Darfuris are African, and skin color is a wholly inadequate measure of ethnicity. But ethnic differences do exist-the use of Arabic as a first language, agricultural practices, and a variety of more subtle cultural differences-and identification by ethnicity comes easily to Darfuris, even in matters such as gait and attire. But of this population of roughly four million "Africans," UN figures for displacement, or even for those defined as "conflict-affected," cannot account for more than one million people. Some are in urban areas, but hundreds of thousands have died (more on exactly how many below), and hundreds of thousands more are at risk in inaccessible rural areas of Darfur.

Sometime in summer 2004-we’ll probably never know just when-human mortality in the Darfur genocide became more a function of malnutrition and disease than violent destruction. What we must not lose sight of is that deaths from malnutrition and disease are no less the product of genocidal ambitions than violent killings: Having so comprehensively and deliberately destroyed the villages and livelihoods of the African tribal populations of Darfur, Khartoum and its Janjaweed allies bear full responsibility for the ongoing deadly consequences of these assaults on civilian targets.

The consensus among Darfuris in exile, at least those who have access to sources on the ground in Darfur, is that approximately 90 percent of all African villages have now been destroyed. But as villagers have fled to camps for displaced persons and into eastern Chad, they have created extremely vulnerable populations in highly concentrated locations. The United Nations reports approximately two million people in camps for displaced persons to which it has access in Darfur and another 200,000 refugees inside Chad along the Darfur border. Many hundreds of thousands of people remain unaccounted for-dead, hiding, staying with host families in other locations, or simply unregistered by the United Nations.

Those inside the camps must contend not only with relentless insecurity but with overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, shortcomings in shelter, and severe water shortages-in some locations people have been forced to survive on what humanitarian groups consider less than half the daily human requirement of water. Though the rainy season may alleviate this problem, the torrential rains also create severe risks for outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery. There were no major outbreaks of either disease in summer 2004; displaced Darfuris are very unlikely to again escape diseases that can claim tens of thousands of lives in a matter of weeks.

Food shortages, however, remain the greatest threat to human life in Darfur. Darfuris normally rely on foraging in times of desperation, but the insecurity that continues to be created by the Janjaweed makes this impossible. Many of the hundreds of thousands in inaccessible rural areas are slowly starving.

Children, as always, are most vulnerable.

Insecurity prevented a significant planting this spring and early summer (normally the major planting season in the agricultural calendar), so there will be no fall harvest-this after last fall’s severely attenuated harvest. Significant domestic food production in Darfur will not be in evidence until fall 2006-at the earliest. People already weakened by malnutrition have become increasingly vulnerable to disease and will only become weaker and more vulnerable in the months ahead. Genocidal mortality will continue for years.

Last December, Jan Egeland, the UN’s Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, estimated that if insecurity forces the withdrawal of humanitarian operations, as many as 100,000 may die every month. And as Kofi Annan recently noted in his report to the Security Council, threats against humanitarian workers are on the rise.

There is compelling data concerning violent mortality. Even with significant biases toward undercounting, the data assembled by the Coalition for International Justice (CIJ), the organization appointed by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (US AID) to research human destruction, strongly suggests that more than 200,000 people have died violently in Darfur. Though not technically an epidemiological study, the CIJ report cannot be ignored, since there is no alternative source of data. The key finding was that 61 percent of those interviewed had witnessed the killing of a family member during an assault by Janjaweed or regular military forces.

This data, along with previous mortality data from the World Health Organization and other humanitarian organizations, and several key epidemiological studies, suggest that between 350,000 and 400,000 people have died from all causes-violence, malnutrition, and disease-in Darfur’s genocide. The impending spike upward in monthly mortality rates, and the great likelihood that genocide by attrition will continue for months and years, suggest, that total mortality may eventually exceed that of Rwanda in 1994. Unfortunately, news media have almost all failed to take account of the mortality data available, particularly data suggesting a total for violent mortality.

The future of Darfur

There is no sign that normal agricultural production will resume any time in the near future. There is no sign that the insecurity confining people to camps for the displaced or villages under siege will be alleviated, even with the currently planned deployment of additional African Union personnel. There is no sign that the international community intends to fund humanitarian efforts in Darfur at an appropriate level. There is no sign that Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, and the new government it dominates, has changed its genocidal ambitions, now best served by preserving the deadly status quo. There is no sign that peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria will yield more than the vaguely worded "declaration of principles" signed last month. And there is no sign of the international humanitarian intervention that might stop the genocide.
There are only signs that the dying will continue indefinitely.

The US response to Darfur must be understood in the context of Bush-administration efforts to end Sudan’s north-south war-as well as the administration’s attempt to secure intelligence from Khartoum on international terrorism. (The National Islamic Front hosted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996, and retained strong connections even when bin Laden moved to Afghanistan.) These have been policy priorities despite the administration’s explicit conclusion, first announced by former Secretary of State Colin Powell last September, that genocide was taking place in Darfur and that the Khartoum government was playing a role.

The Bush administration invested heavily in negotiating an end to the north-south war, and the signing earlier this year of a formal peace agreement-however limited and flawed-must be recognized as a major foreign policy achievement. But precisely because of the administration’s investment in a north-south agreement, including the appointment of former Senator John Danforth as special envoy to Sudan, there was widespread reluctance within the State Department to hold Khartoum accountable for the genocide that was clearly unfolding in early 2004, when north-south peace negotiations had entered their final phase.

The thinking by US officials involved in the negotiations, and their British and Norwegian counterparts, was that pressing the National Islamic Front regime too hard on Darfur would undermine the chances of consummating the north-south agreement. But this diplomatic strategy was of course transparent to Khartoum and thus perversely provided an incentive for the regime to extend negotiations as long as possible-always promising a light at the end of the diplomatic tunnel.

The last issue of substance between Khartoum and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement was resolved in a protocol signed by all parties in late May 2004. Two weeks later, following months of terrifying reports from human rights groups, the State Department announced that it would begin an investigation to determine whether Khartoum was guilty of genocide in Darfur. The close sequence of dates was not a coincidence.

But a tremendous amount of the violent destruction in Darfur had already been accomplished by June 2004; indeed, this marks the approximate point in the conflict at which deaths from malnutrition and disease began to exceed those from violence. Moreover, Khartoum continued to use the north-south peace agreement as a threat, declaring with brazen confidence that if it were pushed too hard on Darfur, the negotiated agreement might be endangered. The agreement’s final signing ceremony occurred in Nairobi on January 9, 2005; the inauguration of a new government took place six months later, on July 9, 2005; the killing in Darfur, of course, continues.

US belatedness in responding with appropriate determination to genocide was mirrored in the flaccid responses of European countries, individually and through the European Union. Canada, Japan, the Arab League, and the African Union were no better. America has been the most generous nation in providing humanitarian assistance to Darfur, reflecting chiefly the determination of officials at US AID. Meanwhile, the commitments of other countries to relief efforts have been less than stellar. The financial responses of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the oil-rich Arab countries have been scandalously laggard.

The African Union in Darfur

The AU began to deploy a small number of monitors to Darfur following a ceasefire signed in April 2004 in N’Djamena, Chad. A commitment in late summer 2004 to increase the monitoring force to approximately 3,500 went unfulfilled for over half a year, and during this time the AU was unable to secure from Khartoum a mandate for civilian protection-only a mandate to monitor the largely nonexistent ceasefire. Recently, the AU has said it will increase its force to 7,700 by September, and possibly 12,000 by spring 2006.

As many have recognized, the AU is quite unable to deploy to this force-level with its own resources and NATO, as a consequence, has very recently agreed to provide logistics and transport capacity. The bigger problem, however, is that even with NATO’s help, the nascent AU Peace and Security Commission is simply not up to this mission if the goal for Darfur is adequate protection for civilians and humanitarian operations. The AU does not have the troops, equipment, or essential interoperability of forces that are necessary given the scale of the crisis. Those paying the price for disingenuous suggestions to the contrary are vulnerable civilian populations and humanitarian aid workers.

Recently, Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio of Senegal refused to accept any longer what has become the mantra of "African solutions for African problems." Gadio declared, on the occasion of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, that his government was "totally dissatisfied" with the hollowness of AU claims to be able to stop genocide in Darfur. Calling the situation "totally unacceptable," he continued: "We don’t like the fact that the African Union has asked the international community to allow us to bring an African solution to an African problem and unfortunately the logistics from our own governments do not follow."

This honesty is remarkable, the more so since Nigeria-current chair of the African Union-has declared at various points that the situation is fully in hand and actually improving. Comments to this effect have come from both President Obasanjo and General Festus Okonkwo, the Nigerian commander of AU forces in Darfur. Nigeria has strong-armed into silence many African nations. The country, which wants to maintain good relations with the Muslim world even as it confronts militant Islam in northern Nigerian states, has yielded to pressure from the Arab League-especially Libya and Egypt-to define the Darfur genocide as an African problem rather than an international one.

Genocidal destruction in Darfur will continue for the foreseeable future. The resources to halt massive, ethnically targeted destruction-of lives and livelihoods-are nowhere in sight. The consequences of this destruction, now extending over almost two and a half years, will be evident for years-in villages that have been burned to the ground, in poisoned water sources, in the cruel impoverishment of people who have lost everything, in deaths that will continue to mount relentlessly.

There is currently no evidence that the international community is prepared to deploy adequate protection for either Darfur’s vulnerable civilian populations or endangered humanitarian operations. August, traditionally the month of heaviest rains, saw a further attenuation of relief efforts, as transport of food and other critical supplies became mired in flooded riverbeds and blocked by severed road arteries. At the same time, waterborne diseases, along with malaria and a wide range of communicable diseases, will take huge numbers of lives. These diseases will be particularly potent killers because so much of the civilian population of Darfur has been seriously weakened by malnutrition. Famine conditions have already been identified in parts of Darfur, and the UN’s World Food Program estimates that 3.5 million people will need food assistance in the near future.

Our moral choice

It is important that the stark moral choice confronting the international community be absolutely clear. History must not record this moment as one in which our decision was uninformed by either the scale of the human catastrophe or an understanding of what is required to stop genocidal destruction.

And so, despite the long odds against an intervention actually taking place, it is our obligation to say with conviction and understanding the most urgent truth: In the absence of humanitarian intervention, Darfur’s civilian population, as well as humanitarian workers, will be consigned to pervasive, deadly insecurity; displaced persons will remain trapped in camps that are hotbeds of disease; agricultural production will remain at a standstill, leaving millions of people dependent on international food assistance for the foreseeable future; aid workers will continue to fall prey to targeted and opportunistic violence.

In other words, the genocide in Darfur will continue. We can stop it. We are simply choosing not to.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and an expert on Darfur. For more information see Reeves’s website, www.sudanreeves.org.

Africa / Darfur : Chronology of events

Amadou Ly

1956 : Sudanese independence, old Anglo-Egyptian condominium. The non-arab tribal and Christian south revolts against the Islamic north.

1958: Army takes over the power.

1969-1985 : the dictatorship of marshal Djafar el-Nemeyri.

1972 : Addis-Ababa agreement puts an end to ten years de guerilla warfare, thereby the south would acquire “autonomy”.

1978 : natural oil (petroleum) discovered in southern Sudan.

1983 : The Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), founded by the dissident colonel John Garang, starts the rebellion. Seeking allies among muslim brothers of Hassan el Tourabi, marshal Nemeyri promulgates a new legislation based on Sharia (Islamic law).

1985 : since 1983, the devastating famine causes a big exodus and killed more than 200 000 people.

1986 : formation of a civil coalition government led by Sadeq el Mahdi.

1989 : coup d'Etat of General Hassan el-Bechir, supported by National Islamic Front, led by Hassan el-Tourabi.

1991 : new Penal Code, based on Sharia. A split inside SPLA weakens the rebellion, at a time when it controlled nearly 90% of the south.

1992-1994 : several southern rebel groups got entangled in infightings.

1994 : In Khartoum, the terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias «Carlos», accused to have committed triple murder in 1975 in Paris, arrested by the French secret service.

1995 : Egypte accuses Sudan of being involved in an assassination attempt on Hosni Moubarak.

1996 : UN accuses the country of supporting terrorism. Expulsion of the “Afghan” Islamist Osama Bin Laden.

1997 : US decides an embargo against Sudan.

1998 : US retorted anti-American attacks in Kenya and Tanzania by bombarding a pharmaceutical plant suspected of producing chemical arms.

1999 : Khartoum seeks to normalize its relations with Ethiopia who ceased to support SPLA.December 1999 : President Bechir dissolves the Parliament, presided by his ex-ally, the Islamist leader Hassan al-Tourabi.

Mai 2000: Hassan el-Tourabi is ousted from the party in power, the National Congress (NC).

February 2001 : Hassan el-Tourabi arrested.

2002

20 July : In Machakos, Kenya, signing of a protocol of agreement in order to end nearly 20 years of conflict in southern Sudan.
10 August : Ban lifted on political parties consisting of pre-1989 coup d'Etat members.

2003

February-March : first armed squad actions in Darfour, the Liberation Movement of Sudan (LMS), calls for a total overthrow of the Khartoum regime. The government enlists militiamen, the janjaweeds (men on horse or camel).

2004

7 January : The Government and the SPLA sign an agreement on the equal share of the petroleum revenue of the southern Sudan.
13 February: The LMS joins the ranks of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which regroups together the northern opposition and the southern rebellion.
2 April: A high rank UN official describes this war in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing”.
8 April: signing of a cease-fire between Khartoum and the rebels of Darfur.
May: a report by the UN High Commissioner for human rights recommends to examine the Khartoum regime’s responsibility in the crimes committed against the humanity in Darfur. UN urges the militia groups to put down weapons.
30 July: UN adopts a resolution threatening the Sudanese government of retaliation if they don’t abstain themselves from recruiting janjawids.August : A contingent of African Union (AU) arrives to look after the security of the observers of the cease-fire signed on 8 April.
18 September : The UN Security Council threatens Sudan of sanctions if they fail in their engagement to restore the security in Darfur.

2005

9 January : The government and the SPLA sign, in Nairobi, a final peace agreement to end 21 years of war in southern Sudan. John Garang became the first vice-president.March : The UN security council decides to send 10 000 men to support the peace agreement. An UN resolution demands for legal actions against the people responsible for genocide in Darfur in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
17 May : NATO announces logistical support to AU mission in Darfur.
1st June : ICC starts an enquery about the crimes committed in Darfur.
8 July : Return de John Garang to Khartoum after a 22 year absence.
30 July : John Garang is killed in a helicopter accident.
20 September : formation of a government of national unity (GNU) in Khartoum.

2006

3 February : The UN security council appeals for an elaboration plan in order to replace AU force by UN force.
17 February : George W. Bush strongly recommends to send a UN peace force supported by the NATO in Darfur in order to double the 7000 soldiers currently deployed by African Union.