Posted on 01/29/2005 5:02:38 PM PST by Pikamax
No relief for Sudan's agony as UN quibbles over the case for genocide
IAN MATHER DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT
UP TO 50,000 civilians have been killed and more than 1.2 million driven from their homes in Darfur in what the World Health Organisation has declared to be the world’s largest ongoing humanitarian emergency.
But any hopes that the refugees in the camps on the Sudanese Chad border may have that the United Nations is about to bring peace enabling them to return home are certain to be dashed this week.
A long-awaited report by a UN commission of inquiry to be published on Tuesday will back away from labelling the actions of the Sudanese government genocide. Such a verdict would have forced the UN to intervene.
Instead, the 140-page report by a five-strong commission of legal experts, headed by Antonio Cassese, an Italian judge, will produce a list of alleged perpetrators, though the names will remain sealed, and recommend that the cases are referred to the international court, a move which could take months, if not years.
Head of the list of those widely suspected of ordering atrocities in Darfur is Musa Hilal, who is alleged to be a leader of the Janjaweed militia and thought to run one of 16 known Janjaweed bases.
He recently denied the charge, insisting that the rebels and the "repercussions of war" were to blame.
Major General Ali Mahjoub Mardi, commander of the Sudanese Air Force, which is accused of bombing raids in Darfur, and the head of the Sudanese Army, General Abbas Arabi, are also key figures in the war in Darfur. But it is unlikely that any military figure in Sudan would undertake raids in Darfur except on the orders of the defence minister, Major General Bakri Hassan Sallah, or even of the president himself, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who came to power in a military coup.
In practice, bringing them to court would not be possible without overthrowing the government, which would mean international military intervention.
The UN believes that provocations by the rebel groups also inflame the situation in Darfur, and may spread the blame to include two rebel leaders, Abdel Wahed Mohammed Ahmad Nour of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Colonel Omar Adam of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
One of the thousands left in limbo by the report will be Aseena. When militias attacked her village the young Sudanese mother ran desperately for her life. A bullet tore off her right hand before lodging in her two-year-old daughter’s heart, killing the child instantly.
Today she is one of 75,000 refugees in Kalma, Darfur’s biggest refugee camp, who have been driven out of their villages by the Janjaweed, the dreaded Arab horsemen who are terrorising the region.
Yet at Kalma camp alone, 21 children are dying each day as a result of malnutrition, according to Médecins sans Frontières, which runs a feeding centre there. Food distribution is sketchy, due to logistical difficulties and security threats. The situation is getting worse, says Dr Joanne Liu, a paediatrician with Médecins sans Frontières.
She said: "People are still fleeing from villages into camps which are already over-capacity and under-resourced. There simply aren't enough resources to deal with the crisis. We can't even fulfil basic needs."
Many charities, including Save the Children, have had to withdraw after their workers have been killed. The UN report will be a blow to the US government, which pressured the international organisation to set up the inquiry last autumn.
The US wants tough action against the Sudanese government, including sanctions, a freeze of assets and a travel ban on individuals. It blames the Khartoum government for backing the Janjaweed.
But backstage manoeuvrings last week failed to solve fundamental disagreements within the UN Security Council.
Russia, which has supplied military hardware to Sudan, and China, which has oil interests, refuse to consider any penalties against Khartoum. Both have the right of veto as permanent members of the Security Council.
The US also faces intense resistance from the Security Council’s Islamic governments, Pakistan and Algeria, who argue the threat of sanctions is unwarranted, saying that Sudan has "made progress" in resolving the crisis. The US will also find itself at loggerheads with European governments over the proposal for the Darfur issue to be sent to the Hague-based International Criminal Court.
The court, which came into existence a year ago, is the first permanent global criminal court to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and massive human rights abuses.
But the Bush administration refuses to recognise it, arguing that America’s political opponents could exploit it to bring malicious cases against US troops and officials. Instead the Americans want a special court to be set up for Darfur like those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Pierre-Richard Prosper, US ambassador for war crimes, called last week for an ad hoc tribunal, using the infrastructure of the Rwanda court in Arusha, Tanzania. "We don’t want to be party to legitimising the ICC," he said.
But the Europeans, who bear the main cost of the tribunal, are refusing to help subsidise another court.
The UN commission of inquiry will report that "gross violations" of international humanitarian law and human rights have occurred in Darfur.
But the question of whether this amounts to genocide has been the subject of intense disagreement for months. Last September the then Secretary of State Colin Powell accused Khartoum and the Janjaweed militias of genocide. But the African Union and the Arab League have dismissed the suggestion. The EU and international human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have avoided using the term.
The EU said a fact-finding mission it sent to Darfur in August had not produced enough evidence for a declaration of genocide.
But last week members of a delegation from the US Congress said they had been shocked by what they had seen in Darfur.
Diane Watson, a California Democrat, spoke of "250,000 souls sitting there" on the Chad-Sudan border "with blank stares in their eyes, traumatised".
The latest fighting in Darfur began in February 2003 when, after years of tribal conflict over scarce resources, two main ethnic African rebel groups took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated Khartoum government of neglect and of using Janjaweed to loot and burn non-Arab villages.
The government responded with a counter-insurgency campaign in which the Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses against the African population. Khartoum admits arming some militias but denies any links to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.
SLIM HOPES LIE IN THE UNION
THE best immediate hope for the refugees lies with the African Union, which has promised more than 3,000 troops and monitors for Darfur. But the AU still has only has 1,200 troops on the ground, and has had problems covering all of Darfur, which occupies an area the size of France.
It says a ceasefire signed between the government and the rebels in April last year is violated by both sides.
Oxfam’s regional director, Caroline Nursey, said: "A fully expanded African Union presence in Darfur is essential to monitor the ceasefire, protect civilians and help to prevent further fighting."
Yet when AU monitors tried last week to investigate reports that 100 people had been killed when Sudan’s air force bombed the town of Shangil Tobaya, Sudanese soldiers turned them away, saying it was not safe.
In a recent briefing to the United Nations Security Council, Jan Pronk, a spokesman for the UN envoy to Sudan, said there was "a build-up of arms, attacks of positions, including air attacks, raids on small towns and villages, increased banditry and more looting".
Pronk also said recently that he envisioned the Security Council adopting a resolution authorising a wide-ranging UN peacekeeping and peace-building mission with between 9,000 and 10,000 troops. But there now seems little chance of this happening.
UN does zilch, again.
Talk talk talk, after all, it's only been going on for twenty years or more.
Rwanda, part deux ?
The Janjaweed is an armed militia group in Darfur, western Sudan, comprising fighters of Muslim Arab background (mainly from the Baggara people).
Since 2003 it has been one of the principal actors in the increasingly bloody Darfur conflict, which has pitted Arabs against the black African population (also Muslim) of the region. Its name translates as "a man with a horse and a gun," although it is more usefully translated as "armed men on horseback."
The Janjaweed is the successor to an earlier Arab tribal militia, the Murahilin (literally "nomads"), which had existed for many years beforehand.
Just shows once again how totally useless the UN is. The US should withdraw. Can anyone tell me why it matters whether they call it genocide or not? These people are being slaughtered.
Provided, apparently, that the perps are Arab and the victims are black.
By Tom Perry
CAIRO, July 29 (Reuters) - The Arab League is cautioning the West against threatening sanctions on Sudan over a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a move some in the Arab world see as a U.S. pretext for toppling another Arab government.
By Tom Perry
CAIRO, July 29 (Reuters) - The Arab League is cautioning the West against threatening sanctions on Sudan over a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a move some in the Arab world see as a U.S. pretext for toppling another Arab government.
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"Many would say that the U.S. administration, as well as some European countries, have found in the Darfur crisis a long lost pretext to put the government under the sword of international sanctions," Arab League spokesman Hossam Zaki said, adding an embargo would not help resolve the crisis, but antagonise Khartoum.
A U.S.-drafted U.N. resolution, on which the Security Council will vote on Friday, implicitly threatens Sudan with sanctions should the government not fulfil pledges to disarm Arab militias and provide aid workers relief access.
The U.S. Congress has said the Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, are committing genocide against non-Arabs in Darfur, where fighting has displaced one million and killed 30,000.
The Darfur rebels say the government armed and sent the militias against them. Khartoum denies the charges.
Many in the Arab world are angry over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein, and what they see as an unswerving U.S. bias towards Israel at the Palestinians` expense. They are now questioning Washington`s motives in taking the Darfur issue to the Security Council.
FRAGMENT THE REGION
"How come the Security Council ... and those with a humanitarian agenda are so active when it comes to such a situation, when they turn a blind eye to the miserable situation in the Palestinian territories," Zaki said.
Mohamed Mahdi Akef, head of Egypt`s Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington was using Darfur as part of a plan "designed to fragment all states of the region, the beginning of it (the plan) was in Iraq".
The United States in 1998 launched missiles at a Khartoum pharamaceuticals plant linked to Osama bin Laden, saying it was making ingredients for chemical weapons. Sudan, which sheltered bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, has been under U.S. sanctions since 1997 for sponsoring terrorism.
But the United States, under the Bush administration, has taken an active diplomatic role in Sudan.
Under U.S. pressure, Khartoum and the southern rebels have made great strides in the last two years towards reaching a final peace deal to end a 21-year-old civil war in southern Sudan, separate from the Darfur conflict. Khartoum has agreed to a southern vote on secession six years after a final deal.
Some Arab writers and politicians are suspicious, however, that the U.S. diplomacy is aimed at splitting the Muslim Arab north of the oil-producing country from the mainly Christian or animist south.
MILITARY INTERVENTION
British and Australian statements of readiness to send troops to Darfur have provoked official concern, although Washington has said talk of military intervention is premature. Sudan`s northern neighbour Libya has said it could not accept the presence of troops from outside the African Union in Sudan, which has said it would fight any foreign soldiers. The Arab League said it was very concerned by talk of such intervention. Zaki said Australia`s troop offer smacks of human rights double standards, especially given that it had voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution demanding Israel tear down a barrier it is building in the West Bank.
Like Australia, the United States stood with Israel against the measure demanding the Jewish state pull down the barrier in line with a World Court ruling.
But for Kamel Labidi, a journalist who formerly worked at Amnesty International, it is the Arab world which should be accused of applying double standards in dealing with Darfur.
"The Arab world, relentless in its condemnation of western behaviour in Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories, has with few exceptions, turned a blind eye to the devastation in Darfur," he wrote in Britain`s Parliamentary Brief.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi said Arab media, including his paper, had not ignored the Darfur crisis. "Our columnists have been publishing articles condemning what has been going on in Darfur," he said.
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