BBC NEWS
10 Giugno 2004
Sudanese tell of mass rape
By Alexis Masciarelli and Ilona Eveleens
Darfur

The pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia has been accused of using systematic rape, as well as killing and destroying the villages of black Africans, in the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region. Behind the closed door of a classroom, in the school compound where she has been living for the last two months, 35 year-old rape-victim Khadija, spoke of her ordeal.
"The Janjaweed arrived one evening in February in our village near Kaileck, they had guns," she says in a quiet voice.
"They followed us when we tried to escape. The group of people I was with was forced back to Kaileck. They had surrounded the whole town." "They separated men and women. Then the Janjaweed selected the prettiest women." "Four men raped me for 10 days." "Every day, women were picked up, taken to the bush where they were raped and brought back to Kaileck. The next day it would start again." Hostage population Khadija is one of some 40,000 people to have found shelter in the town of Kass, in the south of Darfur. In the past 16 months, the conflict opposing the Sudan government and its militia allies to the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has killed at least 10,000 people and displaced more than one million across the large western Sudanese region. "Rape appears to be a feature of most attacks in Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa areas of Darfur," says the latest Human Rights Watch report on the Darfur conflict. "The extent of the rape is difficult to determine since women are reluctant to talk about it and men, although willing to report it, speak only in generalities."
Many witnesses say the population of Kaileck was held hostage by the Janjaweed for two months, despite repeated appeals to the commissioner of Kass. Men were also picked up daily and killed. The accounts are difficult to verify, but accord with the findings of human rights workers in recent months.

Kaileck is now an empty desolated town, with every single house and hut burnt or destroyed.
Ethnic choice
"It is very difficult for me as I am a Fur women and these are Arab men", says Khadija, covering herself with an orange scarf. "These are my only clothes. My sister gave them to me, because the Janjaweed abandoned me naked." "Now I am three-months pregnant. It will be a child from the Janjaweed. But I won't reject this baby. He will be my baby." "When he grows up, he will decide whether he wants to be a Fur or an Arab. If he chooses to be an Arab, he could go with them. If he decides to be a Fur, he will be welcome to stay with us." In the same classroom, a much younger woman listens. Fifteen-year-old Aziza says she was also raped by the Janjaweed back in February. "When Kaileck was attacked, I fled towards the mountains, but five horsemen caught me and took me far away in a field," she says. "All five of them raped me twice. They kept me for 10 days. They whipped me." "I could not say anything because they were armed. All I could do was to cry." "They tied up my arms and my legs and would only release me when they raped me. They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic)." "Eventually they abandoned me. Someone told my mother where I was and she came to take me back. I could not walk by myself."
Pain
But the ordeal did not stop then. "When I arrived in Kaileck, I learnt that the Janjaweed had killed my father." "I am still in pain and I can't really control myself. But I have not seen any doctor." In Kass, like many other towns and camps in Darfur, women are still at the risk of being rape when they go out to gather firewood or fetch water. Their best protection, they say, does not come from the army or local police force, but by going in large groups which are more able to defend themselves.

The names of the two women have been changed to protect their identity.

15 maggio 2004
The world should be ready to intervene in Sudan
Gareth Evans


Darfur
BRUSSELS The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has called it "ethnic cleansing." President George W. Bush has condemned the "atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians." Others are starting to use the word genocide. Whatever you want to call what is going on today in Darfur, in western Sudan, the time for forceful outside intervention is unmistakably approaching.

Since it came to power, the Khartoum regime has undertaken one scorched earth campaign after another in Sudan. In the past year, it has done so against Muslims of African descent in the west of the country, arming and supporting the Arab militias known as Janjaweed, which inflict collective punishment against the civilian populations in Darfur whom the government accuses of supporting a rebellion there. Supported by aerial bombing, Janjaweed attacks have led to wholesale destruction of villages, targeted destruction of water reserves and food stores, indiscriminate killings, looting, mass rape and huge population displacement.

To date, tens of thousands have been killed, and more than one million displaced, many now living in squalid camps where they are dying from disease and malnutrition. According to the U.S. Agency of International Development, even if the war were to stop immediately, as many as 100,000 people will probably die in Darfur in the coming months because of the desperate humanitarian situation. Another 110,000 have fled across the border to Chad.

At the UN commemoration last month of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Kofi Annan rightly highlighted the current situation in Sudan, demanding improved access to those in need of assistance and protection. If humanitarian workers and human rights experts were not given full access to Darfur, he said, the international community had to be prepared to take appropriate action, "which may include military action."

One month after that dramatic and forceful statement, Khartoum is still preventing full access. Aid agencies can now reach some of the internally displaced, but that is far from enough. Meanwhile, the Janjaweed assaults continue, and hundreds of thousands of lives remain at risk. The case for military intervention grows with every passing day.

Resorting to collective military action, overruling the basic norm of nonintervention that must continue to govern international relations, is never an easy call. But nor is it easy to justify standing by when action is possible in practice and defensible in principle. The primary responsibility for the protection of a state's own people must lie with the state itself. But where a population is suffering serious harm and the state in question is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of nonintervention should lead to a larger principle, that of the international responsibility to protect.

These are the basic principles, now quietly gaining international currency, identified in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, of which I was co-chairman in 2001.

Acknowledging, however, that coercive military action should always be an exceptional and extraordinary measure, there are some additional precautionary principles that need to be considered. The motivation must be right, aimed purely at halting the human suffering. The intervention must use the minimum force necessary. It must be guided by clear objectives, and likely to do more good than harm. And it must have a clear mandate from the right authority, always most appropriately the UN Security Council.

For today's Sudan these conditions do not present impossible obstacles. Some important members of the Security Council have been dragging their feet, including Britain and France as well as those more reflexively opposed to intervention, but there is growing international indignation at the atrocities in Darfur and increasing will to take action against Sudan's government.

All that said, there is one final condition that must be met before military intervention is justified: the use of force has to be a last resort, with every nonmilitary option for the prevention or peaceful resolution of the crisis explored and found wanting.

The record so far of options falling short of force in Darfur has not been good. Demands from the UN secretary general, the United States and the European Union have fallen on deaf ears in Khartoum. The United States and the EU already have general sanctions in place against the regime, and it is not likely that more of them will provide much more leverage, though they should not be excluded.

But targeted sanctions freezing the overseas assets and restricting the travel of key Sudanese leaders may change the calculations of some intransigent Khartoum officials, and raising the prospect of international legal accountability for crimes committed may concentrate minds a little more.

The last best hope, if force is to be avoided, is for the Security Council to take hold of the situation, apply whatever further pressures short of force that can be applied, and spell out unmistakably in a resolution that the option of military force is on the table if Khartoum's behavior does not rapidly improve.

Khartoum may be betting that the world is too preoccupied with Iraq to care what happens in Darfur. If Sudan ignores a Security Council resolution, the international community must be ready to show that this is not the case by providing the necessary political will and military resources to hold it comprehensively to account.

Gareth Evans is president of the International Crisis Group, whose latest report on Darfur is at www.crisisweb.org.

washingtonpost.com
27 Maggio 2004 - pagina A28
Pact Signed Toward Ending Sudan War
By Chris Tomlinson - Associated Press

NAIVASHA, Kenya, May 26
Sudan's government and rebels from the southern part of the country signed key agreements Wednesday, paving the way for a comprehensive accord to end Africa's longest-running civil war.
The adversaries signed three protocols on power-sharing and the administration of three disputed areas in central Sudan, wrapping up outstanding issues that had prevented them from reaching a deal. The pact is expected to lead to a full cease-fire and implementation accord to end a 21-year conflict between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in which more than 2 million people have died, mostly in a famine caused by the war. The signing took place in Naivasha, 60 miles west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The accords are not related to rebels fighting a separate insurgency in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where humanitarian groups have raised fears of ethnic cleansing. U.N. officials have described the situation in Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Human Rights Watch, based in New York, cited local sources saying Arab militia fighters attacked five villages in Darfur on Tuesday, killing 46 civilians.
The latest effort to end the southern conflict began in Kenya in 2002, and the government and the rebels have already agreed on how to share the wealth in Africa's largest country and what to do with their armed forces during a six-year transition period. But the talks stalled in recent months as the parties wrangled over how to share power in a transitional government, whether the capital, Khartoum, should be governed under Islamic law and how Southern Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains and Abyei -- areas in central Sudan -- should be administered during the transition period. The protocols signed Wednesday covered all those outstanding issues.
"This is not the final stretch of the peace process," said Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the chief Kenyan mediator. "It is one of the giant steps."
Details of the agreements were not immediately available. But Sudanese Transport Minister Sammani Waseilah said the parties agreed that Khartoum will be governed under Islamic law, and that there will be provisions for non-Muslims, but no special protections. He declined to give details of the power-sharing arrangements for the three disputed areas.
The southern conflict began in 1983 after rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. Although often simplified as a religious war, the conflict is fueled by historical disputes and competition for resources, including major oil reserves.

International Herald Tribune
5 luglio 2004
Crisis in Sudan to lead African Union's agenda
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, Reuters

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia War and looming famine in Sudan have given fresh urgency to an African summit meeting opening Tuesday, which seeks to promote homegrown efforts to end the continent's many conflicts.

Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations is scheduled to open the meeting of the two-year-old African Union. Last week he visited Sudan, whose western Darfur region has been the scene of atrocities by pro-government Arab militias.

Sudan pledged Saturday to accept human rights monitors in the area and to disarm the militias, which have driven more than a million Africans from their homes.

Sudan already has started disarming the groups and is confident that the process will proceed smoothly, Foreign Minster Mustafa Osman Ismail said Sunday. "It is under way," he said.

But rebels said the operation was a cover for a new wave of ethnic cleansing and that a large government force was being mobilized in the regional capital.

Ismail said the militias' disarmament would be verified by a joint commission, an arrangement agreed to last week during Annan's visit to the region.

"We are making real progress," he told Reuters.

The United Nations says thousands in Darfur could die of disease and hunger during the coming rainy season unless a huge aid operation is established.

The African Union, which vowed at its founding to end member nations' long aversion to intervening in each others' wars, finds itself in a difficult position concerning Darfur.

At the meeting this week, the union wants its 53 members to agree on innovative ways of keeping the peace on the continent, but to avoid making far-reaching decisions without paying for their implementation, a failing of the group's ineffectual predecessor, the Organization of Africa Unity.

There is doubt about whether member governments struggling to pull themselves out of poverty can pay the steep cost that peace efforts could entail -- not only in Darfur, but also potentially in other troubled countries such as Congo, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic and Somalia.

"We have to dig deep in our pockets, according to capacity," said Leonardo Simao, foreign minister of Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries. "The will is there, but not necessarily the ability."

War is a preoccupation of the cash-strapped union because its ambitious plans for the continent's economic rebirth are dependent on stabilizing a continent that has seen 186 coups d'etat and 26 major wars in the past 50 years.

During the union's summit this week, Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare is expected to announce a strategic plan for the next three years.

Its budget stands at $1.7 billion, of which $600 million is destined for a "peace fund" to bankroll troops or military observers to various hot points. And another $600 million is destined for the New Partnership for Africa's Development, an initiative aimed at attracting foreign investment and promoting good governance across the continent.

But the sums are large ones for a poor continent and the defunct Organization of African Unity, which has a much more modest budget of $40 million a year, had problems keeping afloat financially.

The union intends to call on member nations to contribute a half of 1 percent of their annual budgets.

On Friday, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the continent's richest country south of the Sahara, said African leaders need to agree on how to boost the union's coffers. A conference where the international community will be asked to contribute has been scheduled for October.

In April the European Union, on which the African Union is modeled, provided $250 million for African peacekeeping operations and in June it contributed $12 million for the union's military observer mission in Darfur.

(Reuters, AFP)

International Herald Tribune
15 maggio 2004
A complex ethnic reality with a long history by R.S. O’Fahey

CHICAGO
The genocidal war in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost province, is being presented in the news media as a war between Arabs and Africans. This simplifies and misrepresents a very complex ethnic reality.

Darfur, an area about the size of France, has three ethnic zones. The northern includes Arab and non-Arab, mainly Zaghawa, camel nomads. The central zone is inhabited largely by non-Arab sedentary farmers such as the Fur, Masalit and others, cultivating millet. In the south there are Arabic-speaking cattle nomads, the Baqqara.

All are Muslim, and no part of Darfur was ever ethnically homogeneous. For example, once a successful Fur farmer had a certain number of cattle, he would ‘‘become’’ Baqqara, and in a few generations his descendants would have an ‘‘authentic’’ Arab genealogy.

Historically, Darfur was a sultanate, established around 1650 and dominated by the Fur people, but ruled by a title-holding elite recruited from all the major ethnic groups. Under the sultan, the settled peoples, basically non-Arab, were able to control or keep out the nomads; the sultanate’s ultimate sanction was heavy cavalry.

The sultanate was destroyed in 1874. Although today’s conflict is much bloodier, as a historian I am struck by the parallels between the present situation and the 1880s. When the sultanate was restored in 1898 by Ali Dinar, he spent most of his reign driving the nomads back, until he was killed by the British in 1916. They then discovered that they had no alternative but to continue his policy. They also kept the old ruling elite intact; many of today’s educated Darfurians are descended from that elite.

From 1916 to 1956, Darfur was a backwater ruled by a handful of British officials. Its only resource was young men who migrated eastward to find work in the cotton schemes between the Blue and White Niles. It was only in the mid-1960s that Darfurians, both Arab and non-Arab, began to enter the national political arena and assert their own identity.

When I first went to Darfur in 1968, members of the ruling elite helped me with my field work, providing me with informants and documents. They wanted their history told.

One of the root causes of the present crisis goes back to the 1980s, when prolonged droughts accelerated the desertification of northern and central Darfur and led to pressure on water and grazing resources as the camel nomads were forced to move southwards. Conflicts over wells that in earlier times had been settled with spears or mediation became much more intractable in an era awash with guns. The situation disintegrated with the decision of the prime minister in the mid-1980s, Sadiq al-Mahdi, to give arms to the Arabic-speaking cattle nomads, the Baqqara, of southern Darfur, ostensibly to defend themselves against the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, or SPLA. No one was surprised when they started to turn the guns on their northern neighbors, the Fur, Masalit and others. The SPLA exacerbated the situation by trying to open a front in southern Darfur. It was at this point that the Arab tribal militias, first called Murahilin, now Janjaweed, began to get out of control.

The ethnicization of the conflict has grown more rapidly since the military coup in 1989 that brought to power the regime of Umar al-Bashir, which is not only Islamist but also Arab-centric. This has injected an ideological and racist dimension to the conflict, with the sides defining themselves as ‘‘Arab’’ or ‘‘Zurq’’ (black). My impression is that many of the racist attitudes traditionally directed toward slaves have been redirected to the sedentary non-Arab communities.

The racist dimension comes to the fore in reports of rape and mass killings, cynically supported by the Khartoum government, which is determined to retain control over the area. The reason is simple: a possible oil pipeline through Darfur.

The tragic problem is that a few observers, military or otherwise, in a place the size of Darfur — where there are virtually no roads, a fragile ecology and where the old order has broken down — will not be enough. And what country or countries would send the kind of force needed in Darfur?

The Janjaweed will be very tough to stop; they have a fully developed racist ideology, a warrior culture, weapons and plenty of horses and camels — still the easiest way to get around Darfur. The genocide in Darfur will be very hard to bring to an end even if there is the will among the international community to do so.

R.S. O’Fahey, a professor of African history at the University of Bergen, Norway, is currently with the African studies program at Northwestern University.