For rebels in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, every day is a struggle. With the hopes of their beleaguered people on their shoulders, they roam some of the world's least hospitable terrain, avoiding attacks by Sudanese helicopters and protecting villagers from raids by the government-backed janjaweed militia.
But, increasingly, the rebels are at risk of becoming the key stumbling block to peace, say analysts.
...
Now, with the patience of the international community wearing thin, Darfur's disparate rebels are meeting in South Sudan in hopes of forming a common agenda for Oct. 27 peace talks in Tripoli, Libya. But even if they do come up with a unified position before heading into the UN-sponsored talks, observers say that getting rebel leaders to agree on who should represent them will be much more difficult.
"The rebels need to get their act together," says Alex de Waal, a Darfur expert at Harvard University, adding that the Sudanese government "is loving every minute of this."
African Union and United Nations officials are looking into reports of a new massacre in Darfur, in which witnesses said that Sudanese government troops and their allied militias killed more than 30 civilians, slitting the throats of several men praying at a mosque and shooting a 5-year-old boy in the back as he tried to run away.
According to several residents of Muhagiriya, a small town in southern Darfur, two columns of uniformed government troops, along with dozens of militiamen not in uniform, surrounded the town around noon on Oct. 8 and stormed the market.
Let's be clear: if this is true, what we're witnessing here is the systematic execution of civilians by their own government. Pretty remarkable, totally horrifying, and not okay in the least.
Newsweek has a gripping interview with General Martin Luther Agwai, the commander of the new joint UN/AU force in Darfur. Um, this guy really does seem to be sounding an alarm here about the scary future of Darfur. Here he is on troop levels:
We're supposed to have 20,000 troops and 6,000 policemen. As of now, we don't even know the troop contributors. To be able to perform the task that is expected of us, that is what is my biggest challenge now. The resolution itself stated that by the end of August we would know all the troop contributors, and now we are at almost the end of September, and we don't know. So you see the whole program is running behind schedule.
On his lack of authority:
Right now, I don't have control over the AU troops. When my [AU-UN] troops arrive, then we'll resolve most of these problems. We are committed to staying, and I hope other countries will still allow their troops to come.
On unreasonable expectations:
I have had telephone calls from different organizations and individuals congratulating me that I now have 20,000 troops. Unfortunately, as you and I know now, we don't even know the troop contributors, so how can we talk about what those troops will do? Those people who are calling me will see nothing happening on the ground and feel disappointed. That is why I have already cautioned people not to expect too much because there is not much happening on the ground.
On what's ahead for him and his mission:
I accepted the job because I wanted to give it my best, and I can only give it my best and be judged by the world depending on the resources available to me. And the resources are not forthcoming.
Sure, the joint African Union/United Nations force seems like a great idea, but without follow-through and resource commitment, it could even be more destructive that not going in to Darfur before. I'm like a broken record on the idea that all a plan and 35 cents gets you is a copy of the Washington Post. It's true in American politics, it's true in African politics, it's true for the people living and dying in Darfur. But we all too often announce a plan, think we've done actually done something, and then move on.
It stinks when it happens in the U.S., to be sure. But it looks like it's on track to happen in Darfur, and the price of that is going to be the suffering of way too many people.
Things I learned from reading the Congressional Research Service report on AFRICOM, the Defense Department's planned centralized U.S. Command in Africa: the way things stand today, Sudan (and, of course, Darfur) falls within the area of responsibility of the Central Command but Chad (and, of course, the many Darfuri refugee camps and towns there) is under the purview of the European Command. Not ideal...
So rebel leaders gathered this week in Eritrea, under the watch of that country's government. In Eritrea, Darfuri rebels can meet, chat, visit coffee shops, and watch cable television. Of note was that the reporting out of the rebel force get-together that implied that the upcoming peace talks in Libya are destined for failure. And frankly, after the killings as Haskanita, it doesn't seem like the prospects for reaching any meaningful peace accord are very good.
But interesting to me is the question of why the rebels would be meeting in teeny weeny Eritrea. I mean, it's a country no bigger than Tennessee. It seems, though, that Eritrea has ambitions of playing a dominent role in northeast Africa:
Eritrea is a little country with big ambitions. Since its independence in 1993, it has projected an aggressive foreign policy, shaping events in the Horn of Africa, though it has only five million people and is one of the poorest countries on earth.
In the past few months, Eritrea has opened its doors to rebel commanders from its neighbors, especially Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia, which is part of the reason American officials are alarmed. The State Department says Eritrea has been shipping arms to Islamist fighters in Somalia, an allegation that the Eritrean government denies. At the same time, American diplomats have been quietly working with the Eritreans to push Darfur's ever expanding galaxy of rebel groups to peace talks scheduled for the end of October in Libya.
The Eritreans have a decent track record, American officials say, when it comes to Sudan. Last year, the president of Eritrea, Isaias Afewerki, brokered a peace deal between the Sudanese government and rebels in a separate conflict in eastern Sudan that had ground on for 15 years and that cost thousands of lives.
African Union officials said Eritrea wields even more influence in Darfur, because of its longstanding contacts with the rebel groups there.
The Eritreans "have control over some of these movements," said Sam Ibok, a senior adviser of the African Union. "And the Eritreans have played a constructive role."
So frustrating. The seven Nigerian peacekeepers killed in the Haskanita attack have been buried:
A sob rose from the crowd of mourners Friday as white ambulances entered Nigeria's main military cemetery, carrying the bodies of seven soldiers killed while on peacekeeping duty in Darfur.
Nigeria, the biggest troop contributor to African peacekeeping missions, suffered the heaviest losses when Darfur rebels overran an African Union post in North Darfur last weekend. In all, seven Nigerians and one peacekeeper each from Botswana, Senegal and Mali were killed.
Nigerians, including those mourning Friday, said the attack would not bury hope that they and other Africans can bring peace to the world's poorest continent with missions like the one in Sudan's Darfur.
''Anywhere you have war, you will have losses,'' said Matthew Edoh, whose uncle, Lance Corp. Danjuma Madaki, was among the seven Nigerians brought home for burial Friday. ''But if you can go for peace, even if you sacrifice yourself, you must go. We are all fellow human beings.''
Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Andrew Owoye Azazi, Force Commander of the AU-UN hybrid force in Sudan, Gen Martin Luther Agwai, Nigerian Ambassador to Sudan, Ambassador Salihu Ahmed-Sambo, and his Malian counterpart led other military and civilian leaders to pay tributes to the fallen heroes. Kicking the tributes, the Nigerian contingent Commander, Col. James Oladipo was chocked with emotion.
With his voice shaky but still echoing through the afternoon humid weather, Col. Oladipo read out the curriculum vitae of the seven soldiers, sometimes pausing, removing his handkerchief to wipe his face intermittently. As he saluted and sat down at his front row seat, he leaned on his two hands, wiping his face. For the major part of the ceremony, he held his chin in his left hand.
Col. Oladipo later told The Guardian: "It is bad to loose one soldier. It is too terrible to loose seven, in one swoop. It's enough to make anybody emotional. None of these soldiers hesitated when their nation called upon them to resign the pleasures of life and leave their families, kith and kin to serve in a land strange to all of them. But believing that every man should live in peace and they could fall in this noble cause, they determined at the hazards of their lives to answer their nation and humanity in Darfur. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of going back home to meet their loved ones."
If you're reading this on the actual darfurwatch.com website and not via RSS, then over to the right you're seeing an odd picture of a man with his arms spread wide and standing in front of what looks to be a Volvo --->. Flickr tells me his name is Fred. I designed the photo block for this site to simply pull the latest photo from Flickr that someone at some point has tagged with "Darfur." Sometimes it turns up some interesting finds, but I have no editorial control over what gets displayed. Thus, sometimes we get a Fred.
Wow. This is one
brave ex-President. Jimmy Carter attempted to force his way into the
pro-government town of Kabkabiya yesterday. He got into a shouting match
with Sudanese security forces before U.S. Secret Service guided him into
a car. The former president was in Sudan as part of a mission by the
Elders.
This Christian Science Monitor piece accepts the idea that the conflict in Darfur is tied to the encroaching Sahara, and gives an account of how Tuareg herders and Hausa farmers in increasingly-desertified Niger are working to avoid that same fate.
Still no real clarity on who was behind the recent vicious attack against African Union peacekeepers in Haskanita that left about a dozen Nigerian soliders dead and the future of the joint U.N./A.U. force in jeopardy, but here's where we are:
Two Sudanese rebel groups are suspected of being behind the attack, a source close to the investigation in Sudan said Tuesday.
"It could be a combined attack by the Sudan Liberation Movement SLM-Unity of Abdhallah Yahia and another group which recently split from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)," the source said on condition of anonymity.
The source declined to say what the suspicions were based on.
The attack on African Union troops in Darfur in Haskanita is pretty much the worst possible thing that could occur at this juncture, and I have to imagine that whomever perpetrated the attacks knew that full well. At least a dozen peacekeepers were killed when their base was raided. About 20 more are still missing. Putting together the 27,000 joint A.U./U.N. force was a challenging project even before this attack. Now that peacekeepers are being killed and kidnapped in large numbers, countries are going to have to engage in some introspection before deciding that it's worthwhile to send their troops into this chaotic situation.
Who was behind the attacks? Given the history of conflict in Darfur, the mind immediately jumps to the government in Khartoum. But the reporting from the region is fuzzy this morning and it looks like there may be a chance that rebel forces were behind it.
While Darfur has never been a strictly black and white situation, things now have turned into a big mess of gray. There are no longer the perpetrators and the victims; there are now a wide variety of players who have changing loyalties and motives and tactics. And that happened while the world watched. From the New York Times:
Haskanita is embroiled in a three-sided war among two formidable rebel groups and the government. United Nations officials said that the area has become so dangerous that most aid organizations have pulled out.
Recently, Haskanita has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the region. Aid workers said those battles killed more than 300 people, including several dozen mowed down by government helicopter gunships. The government denied killing any civilians.
On top of that, the two main rebel groups in Haskanita, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, have splintered and begun fighting among themselves, driving thousands of civilians from their homes. Many had set up tents around the small African Union base, where the peacekeepers were handing out food and medicine.
RSS