"The UN Security Council approved a plan to reinforce the African Union 7,000-strong force, unable to quell the violence there. The Sudan has objected. (CNN) Counterterrorism Blog has comments and Sudan Watch has background.
Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha has vowed the regime would maintain its opposition to a UN peacekeeping force for Darfur and hailed Hezbollah as a model of resistance, official media said.
Diplomats in New York said it was highly unlikely that countries would contribute troops to a mission in the face of opposition from the Khartoum government, which has vowed to attack any forces sent uninvited to the area.
Rwanda's army spokesman says there have been delays in paying peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region because the African Union is short of cash.[hat tip CFD via POTP]
Some of the Rwandan troops who make up over 2,000 of the 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur have complained they have not received their $25 daily allowance.
Maj Jules Rutaremara told the BBC the AU mission is reliant on international funding which has not been forthcoming.
"The AU has financial problems emanating from the fact that it is heavily dependent on partners outside Africa - mainly the European Union, the US and Canada, whose contributions have not been forthcoming," Maj Rutaremara told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
But he said that he was confident the entitlements due to the Rwandan soldiers would be settled.
"The AU has registered delays in payments of allowances and salaries, sometimes going up to two months, but that does not mean that they will not be paid," he said.
The decision about whether to withdraw the AU mission was a political decision, not a military one, he said, although the Rwandan army was concerned about logistical problems in Darfur.
Two Rwandan soldiers in Darfur died in an ambush earlier this month.
"I welcome this Resolution. It will lay the basis for a vigorous international commitment to bring an end to the conflict in Darfur. The government in Khartoum has not been able to shoulder its responsibility to protect its people. I would therefore urge the government in Sudan to accept the UN initiative," says Minister for Foreign Affairs Jan Eliasson.
"We cannot tacitly accept a situation in which Darfur collapses into an even deeper spiral of violence and suffering. It is important that the Resolution can be fully implemented," says Mr Eliasson.
The rebel Sudan Liberation Movement welcomed the UN Security Council resolution No 1706 for the deployment of an international force in Darfur region, the SLM urged the international community to put pressure on Khartoum to accept its implementation.
In a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the chairman of the SLM, Ahmed Abdelshafi Bassey, It described the resolution as "workable plan to protect innocent civilians in Darfur".
The UN Security Council on Thursday authorized the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to halt the bloodshed in Darfur. The resolution No 1706 called for as many as 17,300 troops and 3,300 civilian police but invited the government's consent before deployment.
"Resolution 1706 has undoubtedly rekindled fresh hopes for the destitute in the IDPs camps, the majority of whom are women, children, orphans and the elderly;" Bassey said.
The mission would aim to bolster the Darfur peace process, secure the camps and demilitarized zones, and ease regional tensions amid the security vacuum.
Baasey was designated as chairperson of a faction of the SLM dominantly represents Fur ethnic group, the biggest Darfur tribes, last July to replace Abdelwahid al-Nur .
Below, the letter sent by Mr. Ahmed Abdulshafi Bassey, Chairman Designate, to Mr. Koffi Annan, UN Secretary General regarding Resolution No. 1706.
Date: August 31, 2006
To The Right Honorable: Mr. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General
Subject: United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 1706
Dear: Mr. Secretary General
The SLM/A has received the adoption of Resolution No. 1706 with jubilation but not without skepticism. Our call for an expeditious deployment of the UN peacekeeping forces into Darfur goes back to the adoption of the N'Djamena Ceasefire Agreement in April, 2004. We believe that, the UN Security Council has finally put together a workable plan to protect innocent civilians in Darfur.
Resolution 1706 has undoubtedly rekindled fresh hopes for the destitute in the IDPs camps, the majority of whom are women, children, orphans and the elderly. The new Resolution also gives more hope to provide protection against the brutal attacks of GoS forces and its militias. We would like, however, to bring to the attention of the President and the honorable members of the SC, as well as the entire international community that, the latest round of deployment of more arms and forces to Darfur by GoS will cause more suffering of innocent civilians in the region. The SLM/A would like to take this opportunity to assure you our full commitment to abiding by all previously signed ceasefire agreements and protocols.
While we strongly commend and support the firm stance and commitments made by the honorable members of the UNSC, we look upon the entire international community to join hands to pressurize the GoS to favorably respond to the implementation of the SC Resolution 1706. We should all focus on the urgency to stop more losses of human lives, the need for providing humanitarian assistance and to stop further human rights violations. Please help restore the dignity of the people of Darfur.
Sincerely,
Ahmed Abdulshafi Bassey Chairman Designate Sudan Liberation Movemet/Army
The rebels said the new offensive began two days ago as government forces attacked and occupied Kulkul about 35 km (22 miles) north of Darfur's main town el-Fasher.- - -
"Government forces have moved north of Kulkul with about 90 vehicles and are attacking the area of Um Sifir, bombing with Antonov planes," said Jar el-Neby, a rebel leader from a faction which did not sign a May peace deal.
A Sudanese armed forces spokesman said the army did have forces in Kulkul but that the area had always belonged to them.
"There are no new operations. Only before many days to confront an attack by the (rebel) National Redemption Front (NRF)," he added.
The Sudanese government has launched a major offensive against rebels in war-torn Darfur in recent days, human rights activists and African Union officials said Friday.- - -
The fighting, which according to Human Rights Watch has involved government aircraft bombing villages, began as a senior US envoy was in Khartoum to press the government to accept the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the western region.
Sudan on Thursday rejected as "illegal" a UN Security Council resolution paving the way for the replacement of an ill-equipped 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur with more than 20,000 UN troops and police.
Government troops Monday attacked and later occupied Kulkul, a rebel-held village north of Darfur's provincial capital el Fasher, David Buchbinder of Human Rights Watch said by telephone from New York, citing local reports. Two other rebel-controlled villages have since reportedly fallen under government control.
An African Union official in Khartoum, Sam Ibok, said that more than 20 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 have been displaced since major clashes started early this week according to reports from the affected areas.
He said that these northern areas were a "no-go" zone for AU forces and therefore he had no precise information.
International observers in north Darfur reported that civilians attempting to flee the attacks in Kulkul were turned back by Sudanese government troops, according to Human Rights Watch.
Sudanese officials could not be reached on Friday, a weekend day, to comment on the reports. Rebel commanders didn't answer calls. [edit]
Eric Reeves, a professor from Smith College in the U.S. who is a prominent campaigner for an end to the Darfur conflict, said he had information that Minni Minnawi, leader of the only rebel faction to sign the peace deal, was collaborating with the government offensive.
He said his contacts told him that thousands of troops and janjaweed militias backed by Antonov planes that have been carrying out bombing missions have taken control of three villages north of el Nasher, Kulkul, Bir Maza and Sayeh.
"They are bombing villages without any regard for civilians, it is more genocidal violence. The end game is to take full control of northern Darfur and isolate the rebels," he said.
John Prendergast, an expert from the International Crisis Group, a global think-tank, who was in Darfur until the end of last week, said the government offensive was provoking spiraling violence and reduced humanitarian access to the region.
Earlier this week the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, warned that "a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale" loomed within weeks in Darfur unless the Security Council acted immediately.
Egeland said there could be hundreds of thousands of deaths if aid operations - already at grave risk because of rising numbers of attacks against aid workers, dramatically reduced access to those in need, and massive funding shortfalls - collapsed.
Another 100,000 or 200,000 people could be forced to flee their homes in the northern part of the remote province, envoy Pekka Haavisto said.
"It could be a matter of days or weeks for the conflict to escalate into a widespread military operation," Haavisto told journalists on his return from a visit to Darfur.
He said EU officials working in the area had told him the situation was getting worse.
He also said it was worrying the Sudanese government was planning to send 10,000 troops to Darfur.
"We think this does not comply with the May peace agreement and appears as a vast military operation ... Some representatives say the intention is to wipe the non-signatories (of the peace agreement) off the map."
The United Nations Security Council voted on Thursday to create a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur to avert a new humanitarian disaster, which was welcomed by Haavisto. But the Sudanese government rejected the resolution as "illegal".
Haavisto said the government's objections sprang from its attitude towards the West, as it mistakenly feared Darfur would become another Iraq or Afghanistan.
As the rebel groups' main goals appear to include overthrowing the government, there are also fears that the conflict and current humanitarian crisis would spread out of Darfur, he said.
Haavisto said he had met the Sudanese government and Darfur rebel movements during his visit to Khartoum and Darfur.
"Through the EU we have worked hard all summer to bring alive the Darfur peace agreement signed in early May. We believe we will have to persuade the non-signatory parties to agree with the peace process," he said.
Darfur is headed for a humanitarian calamity unless Sudan's Khartoum-based government ends renewed fighting in the western region and allows a UN peacekeeping force in, Britain said today.
Hours ahead of a UN Security Council vote on a US-British resolution proposing up to 22,500 U.N. troops for Darfur, British Foreign Office Minister David Triesman said the humanitarian crisis there had reached a decisive moment.
Rebels have reported renewed fighting in the north of the region in the last two days between the government and rebel groups who refused to sign a May peace accord.
"The chances of the humanitarian and food distribution operations working in an environment where war has broken out again are very, very poor indeed," Triesman said.
"We were in a bad situation two days ago. We are rapidly going towards a calamity."
"The vital thing to say is that this resolution does address the international humanitarian catastrophe and it does address the security issues which would make it possible to do something about that catastrophe," Triesman said.
Triesman was adamant that the resolution was no threat to Sudan's government.
"This is very strongly about the UN providing the security in which the humanitarian effort can succeed.
Sudan rejected a Security Council resolution passed on Thursday to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. troops and police to its violent Darfur region as illegal and contravening a May peace accord, officials said.
"Our stand is very clear, that the Sudanese government has not been consulted and it is not appropriate to pass a resolution before they seek the permission of Sudan," said Presidential Advisor Ali Tamim Fartak.
The presidential advisor responsible for Darfur, Majzoub al-Khalifa, told Al Jazeera television that the resolution was completely rejected by Sudan.
"We completely reject this resolution ... which is illegal," he said. "This resolution is opposing the Darfur peace agreement."
The Security Council vote on Thursday was 12 in favour, with abstentions from Russia, China and Qatar, the only Arab council member, despite Sudanese and Arab requests the vote be postponed.
But the troops cannot be deployed until Sudan agrees. The United Nations wants to replace or absorb an African Union force in Darfur, which has funds until mid-October and whose mandate expires on Sept. 30.
Resolution 1706, backed by the United States and Britain, passed with 12 votes and three abstentions: China, Russia and Qatar. It provides for the transfer of African Union peacekeepers currently in Darfur to the UN force.- - -
"Paragraph one of the resolution invites the government of Sudan to consent to deployment, though nothing in this language requires their consent," John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, told council members after the vote. "We expect their full and unconditional cooperation and support with the new UN peacekeeping force. Failure on the government of Sudan's part to do so will significantly undermine the Darfur peace agreement and prolong the humanitarian crisis in Darfur."
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters before entering the council chamber that China disagreed with the timing of the resolution.
In his explanation of the vote, Wang said, "We feel [the vote] ... will not stop further deterioration of the situation in Darfur ... and will cause problems in implementing the Darfur peace process".
China had complained that the draft resolution seemed to impose the UN force on Sudan.
Last-minute changes to the resolution on Wednesday appeared to address this issue by reaffirming the council's "strong commitment to the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Sudan, which would be unaffected by transition to a United Nations operation in Darfur".
"The council is here to help Sudan not threaten it. It is here to aid Sudan, not undermine it," said Karen Pierce, deputy British ambassador to the UN.
Drawing distinctions in DarfurExcellent Daniel. Loved these two new think pieces of yours. Why can't everyone just pull together? Look forward to reading your follow up. [Click into Daniel's commentary to see hyperlinks provided]
There is an important difference between the humanitarian lobby for Darfur and the military intervention lobby.
Following on from my last piece about Darfur, I've had an interesting email exchange with David Rubinstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition. He wanted to point out that the SDC is not a part of the "Darfur intervention lobby", and that it shouldn't be placed in the same bracket as those who see Darfur as yet another test case for military action in accordance with the doctrine of Responsibility To Protect.
I disagree with David on a number of points: I think that SDC is wrong to implicitly give up on the African Union Mission In Sudan (AMIS) by making the deployment of a UN force a key demand (but right to insist that in the meantime, AMIS and the humanitarian relief effort should be immediately and fully funded). I also think that a number of groups which seem to be affiliated with the SDC website (specifically, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Res Publica/Darfurgenocide.org and the Stop Genocide Now campaign) appear to be promoting an agenda which goes well beyond the humanitarian campaign of SDC and into demands for either coercive military intervention or the break-up of Sudan as a state. And finally, I don't agree with the SDC's emphasis on referring to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur as a genocide; this is not what the UN commission found to be the case, and the campaign in the west to have Darfur designated as a genocide appears to be very caught up with the belief of the Darfur intervention lobby that this would create an automatic legal trigger justifying military action.
However, the central message that the SDC will be promoting in New York on September 17 is similar to that of Jan Egeland: peace on all sides, funding for the humanitarian effort and resumption of the peace talks and Darfur dialogue. As a result, I think I was probably unfair in failing to draw a distinction between the specific organisation SDC and the more general "Darfur lobby". I'll apologise to David for this and it seems to me that the programme the SDC will be pushing is a sensible one.
There remains, however, a very large and vocal lobby for "Darfur intervention", and I think my broader critique of this tendency remains valid. The question is: why do you think you know so much better than the United Nations what the United Nations ought to be doing? If you are so certain that something must be done, why have you no specific proposal for what must be done? And most importantly, has the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan really been such a success that you are prepared to export the model to a country with poor food security? There seems to be an inverse correlation between the amount that people seem to know about Darfur and the amount of violence that they think the solution to the crisis will contain.
The Euston Manifesto Group is planning a meeting entitled "Darfur: An Urgent Case For Humanitarian Intervention", on September 5. I have applied for tickets and if possible, will try to make the point that there surely ought to be at least a question mark in that title.
There is apparently going to be a major "Save Darfur" march across the USA on September. Since the "Save Darfur Coalition" clearly have their hearts in the right place, I don't want to sound like I'm criticising them. However, I am very worried that the coalition seems to be quite short of a specific plan for saving Darfur, and is thus rather vulnerable to being exploited by people who do not have the best interests of Darfur at heart. (This would hardly be the first time that a well-intentioned humanitarian campaign got hijacked by dangerous ideologues.) For this reason, I suggest below a few concrete proposals and outline the dangers posed by the current campaign.Great. Well said Daniel. Thanks.
In May, I was writing about the peace agreement in Darfur as the only realistic prospect for improving the situation there and suggesting that developed world commentators should shut up for a while and give it a chance. It appears that I was doubly wrong; nobody shut up and it did not have a chance. There was a period in June and early July when the level of violence was definitely abating and it looked as if the holdout groups could be brought into the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), but instead, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) has fallen apart into a myriad of factions and a new and extremely violent guerrilla force (the National Redemption Front or NRF) has been formed. Things are now, according to Jan Egeland and Jan Pronk, the two commentators who I trust the most - as bad as they have been for at least two years.
Although the situation is as bad or worse than it was before the peace agreement, it is now bad in a different way. Most of the violence is now being carried out not by the Sudanese state and Janjaweed irregular militias, but by the various rebel group factions.
Drawing distinctions can get quite confusing. The convention is that each SLA faction is named after its main commander. Thus, SLA/Minawi is Minni Minnawi's faction, which is the largest, mainly identified with the Zarghawa tribe, and which signed the peace agreement. (I use the word "tribe" because it is conventional, but note that it is a racially loaded word and these groups ought to be thought of as ethnicities rather than as organised tribal power structures.)
During the Abuja peace talks, Abdel Whalid Mohammed el-Nur split from Minawi, forming the group that is now known as SLA/Whalid or SLA/Nur (and which is better represented among the Fur tribe). The SLA/Nur also split during the talks, as 19 of its military commanders accused Nur himself of harbouring dictatorial ambitions. This group is known as SLA/G19.
As well as the SLA, the other main rebel grouping was the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a group which had its roots in Hassan al-Turabi's Islamist movement, but which appeared (to Jan Pronk at least) to have dropped most of its specifically Islamic demands in the peace negotiations and probably ought to be regarded as a Sudanese political movement rather than a Darfuri nationalist one. The JEM has always been very violent, opposed to peace, and has always seemed to be very well resourced with weapons and money. It has now blocked with SLA/G19 to form the National Redemption Front (NRF), and the worst of the violence over the last few weeks has been taking place as the NRF has taken over territory in North Darfur that was previously held by SLA/Minnawi.
The situation in the refugee camps has become unspeakably grim. SLA/Nur has allegedly been press-ganging men into joining their militia, while other rebel factions, private militias and freelance Janjaweed have been running riot around the camps, attacking and raping women as they venture out to collect firewood. The proportion of Sudan that is accessible to aid agencies keeps shrinking, and the donor community has failed to fund the aid effort properly. Mass starvation is now imminent.
The Khartoum government have not actually been responsible for the majority of the violence. However, they also bear their share of responsibility for the current disaster. Most press coverage appears to be criticising them most severely for refusing to allow a UN peacekeeping force to be brought in. However, they have stubbornly required that every rebel group sign the DPA before they are prepared to negotiate with them, which has resulted in the effective disbanding of the Ceasefire Commission and made diplomacy far more difficult than it needed to be. Even worse, Khartoum has decided that by failing to sign the agreement, the holdout rebel factions have become "terrorists" and subsequently permitted the Sudanese national army to suppress them. Observers in north Darfur have been witnessing the amassing of troops and helicopters, suggesting a forthcoming attack on the NRF forces in support of SLA/Minnawi. Such a large attack would be bound to have significant civilian casualties, even if carried out with the best of intentions, and the world is right not to trust the Sudanese government.
So what is to be done? Well, the demand that has been made for the last several months is for a UN peacekeeping force to be put into Sudan. But this is not nearly specific enough. A UN peacekeeping force is not a panacea and has no specific magical ability to keep peace. In order to do better than the existing AU force, any UN peacekeeping force would have to either a) be much larger or b) have very different mission terms and rules of engagement.
The first of these possibilities - a much bigger UN peacekeeping force - raises as many questions as it answers. The implicit message from a number of western governments is that they are not prepared to fund the African Union mission properly, but would make much more resources available for a UN mission. I don't understand why anyone would take this point of view. There is no reason to believe that African troops are incompetent, or that they are incompetently led, or that they are partisan. The international community just seems to be allergic to funding a mission to Darfur unless it is the UN getting the credit. This seems so incomprehensible to me that I have to believe that the international community is being insincere, and that they are using the lack of a UN force as a fig leaf to cover up a general reluctance to commit resources. I'm agnostic here. The important issue is clearly to get a properly resourced peacekeeping force guarding the refugee camps as soon as possible. It's very doubtful that any feasible size of peacekeeping force could have a material effect on the factional conflicts, but genuine help could be given here.
The second possibility - that a UN peacekeeping force could have different mission terms or rules of engagement - is part of the whole problem. If we look through the rhetoric about "colonialism", the reason that Khartoum doesn't want a UN mission in Sudan is that they suspect that such a mission would at a minimum start arresting them on International Criminal Court charges and quite likely be the prelude to a removal of the Khartoum government and a partition of Sudan into separate countries.
A lot of the organisations affiliated to the Save Darfur coalition do in fact want to see Sudan broken up, and this is one of the first reasons why I think that some of the statements of the coalition have been highly counterproductive to the aim of getting a proper peacekeeping force put in place. When people like Eric Reeves start talking about a "non-consensual deployment of UN troops" (I don't know why he can't bring himself to use the word "invasion"), and are treated as mainstream commentators by the Save Darfur lobby, it is not surprising that the Sudanese government is suspicious of the true motives of the humanitarian lobby.
Neither Pronk nor Egeland view a "non-consensual deployment" as a realistic option, because of course it isn't. It would involve fighting a war against the Sudanese army which could only end in Sudan requiring a similar reconstruction effort to that needed in Iraq or Afghanistan, neither of which have gone so well as to make a neutral observer think it would be a good idea to try a repeat in a country with poor food security. Looking back at the list of what is going wrong in Darfur, they are all currently consequences of anarchy.
Promoting more anarchy seems like a bad idea. Sudan does not yet exhibit all the worst problems of Somalia, Iraq Afghanistan and Congo, but it has a plentiful supply of nascent warlords, insurgents, Islamists and border resource disputes, so it could yet show us exactly how bad things could be. Some things, unfortunately, cannot be achieved by force, and the fact that their absence is an intolerable state of affairs does not in and of itself mean that it is worth giving violence a try anyway.
As well as making it diplomatically more difficult for a peacekeeping force to be put in place, there are two more baleful effects of the more militant wing of the "Save Darfur" lobby. First, there is a kind of catch-22 effect created by the lobby's insistent focus on the evils of the Khartoum regime as the sole cause of the problems. In order to create a meaningful peace in Darfur, everyone has to sign up to the DPA or its successor treaties. However, at present, every group that signs the agreement is being treated as if they were cronies of Khartoum and therefore obvious enemies of the Darfurians. This has to be unconstructive; at present, humanitarian organisations are being stigmatised and having their impartiality called into question, which interferes with their ability to do their job.
And more perniciously, as I said in the earlier piece, there is a real danger of creating perverse incentives for the Darfurian rebels (who, one has to emphasise, are responsible for the current slaughter more than anyone). If a mass movement in the west appears to be simultaneously calling for a decapitation of the Khartoum government and denigrating the peace agreement, then this must surely encourage the rebel groups to follow the NRF strategy rather than joining the peace agreement.
So what should we be asking for? I can't think of anything more sensible or realistic than Jan Egeland's suggestions, which I'd summarise as follows:
1. A diplomatic effort to persuade Sudan's government to stand down its military operation and allow a UN force into Sudan. This is not as macho and satisfying as an invasion but it will be less horribly destructive. Even if this means giving commitments about ICC prosecutions that turn to ashes in our mouths, it is the only way forward that does not involve disastrous loss of life. Certainly, if the UN is going to retain the credibility of its peacekeeping operations, it needs to establish the principle that they are not fronts for an invasion and regime change, and anyone interested in humanitarian intervention ought to respect that.
2. Proper funding of the African Union mission and the relief effort, now and unconditionally. It is a scandal that funding has been delayed for these vital operations because of the negotiations over the UN force. Contrary to what news reports might suggest, the full title of AMIS is not "The Poorly Equipped And Funded African Union Mission". It is poorly equipped and funded because a lot of donor nations made big promises to fund it. A promise they have not kept.
3. Respect for the peace process and even-handedness among all parties to the conflict. As Egeland says, there can be no military solution. No indication should be given at all to the NRF that they can gain more outside the peace process than within it, or that they can depend on a UN force being sent to protect them if they start an attack on SLA/Minnawi. Similarly, Khartoum and SLA/MInnawi need to be held to the terms of the ceasefire they have agreed and not allowed to believe that they can weasel out of it by pretending to be carrying out anti-terrorist activities.
Once more, Darfur is on a knife edge, and once more there is considerable potential to make things worse. And so once more, there is a positive duty on all western commentators to be sure that before opening their mouths, they know what they are talking about.
[Ibrahim] told Radio France Internationale, that this Draft resolution tries to impose unacceptable peace of Abuja while Darfur people reject this agreement.He's got a nerve. How come he is permitted residency in France?
Khalil Ibrahim, who rejected to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) last May, considers priority must be to find an agreement over the demands of the Darfur holdout rebels groups constituting the majority in the troubled region.
"Increasing the number of the troops only will not solve the problem of Darfur, but the political solution should come first. The DPA should be reconsidered and made comprehensive and then, the international troops should come to maintain the peace process," he said.
