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Darfur conflict
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The War in Darfur is a conflict that is in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Unlike the Second Sudanese Civil War, the current lines of conflict are seen by some reporters (such as those with USA Today and Slate magazine) to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious. However, a United Nations report states that the various tribes under attack (chiefly the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to have a distinct ethnicity from their attackers.
One side of the armed conflicts is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Afro-Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan.
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The War in Darfur is a conflict that is in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Unlike the Second Sudanese Civil War, the current lines of conflict are seen by some reporters (such as those with USA Today and Slate magazine) to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious. However, a United Nations report states that the various tribes under attack (chiefly the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to have a distinct ethnicity from their attackers.
One side of the armed conflicts is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Afro-Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan. They are mainly camel-herding nomads. The other side comprises a variety of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the land-tilling non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting the tribes from which the rebels draw support. The conflict began in February 2003.
Causes
The combination of decades of drought, desertification, and overpopulation are among the causes of the Darfur conflict. The Baggara nomads searching for water have to take their livestock further south, to land mainly occupied by Black African farming communities.
There are many estimates of casualties. Some non-governmental organizations use 200,000 to more than 500,000; the latter is a figure from the Coalition for International Justice. As many as 2.5 million are thought to have been displaced as of October 2006. (see Mortality Figures section, below).
The Sudanese government has been accused of suppressing information by killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence (such as mass graves) to eliminate their probative value. In addition, by obstructing and arresting journalists, the Sudanese government has been able to obscure much of what has gone on. While the United States government has described the conflict as genocide, the UN has continuously stopped short of using such language. (see List of declarations of genocide in Darfur). In March 2007 the UN mission accused Sudan's government of orchestrating and taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there.
After fighting stopped in July and August, on 31 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new 26,000-troop UN peacekeeping force called UNAMID to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region.
On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The ICC's prosecutor for Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asked a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. The ICC prosecutor's indictment has drawn widespread international criticism.. The warrant has now been given and has caused many concerns that this could further divide the opposing groups.
Timeline
A rebellion started in 2003 against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, with two local rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) — accusing the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs. The government was also accused of neglecting the Darfur for a Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to assess the Sudanese conflict. On 31 January 2005, the UN released a 176-Page report saying that while there were mass murders and rapes, they could not label it as genocide because "genocidal intent appears to be missing". Many activists, however, refer to the crisis in Darfur as a genocide, including the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network. These organizations point to statements by former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, referring to the conflict as a genocide. Other activists organizations, such as Amnesty International, while calling for international intervention, avoid the use of the term genocide.
In May 2006 Minni Minnawi's faction of the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, agreed to a draft peace agreement with the Sudanese government. The other faction of the SLM, led by Abdul Wahid al Nur, the founding leader of SLM, refrained from signing the agreement. On 5 May, the agreement, drafted in Abuja, Nigeria, was signed by Minnawi's faction and the Sudanese government.
International response
International attention to the Darfur conflict largely began with reports by the advocacy organizations Amnesty International in July 2003 and the International Crisis Group in December 2003. However, widespread media coverage did not start until the outgoing United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, called Darfur the "world's greatest humanitarian crisis" in March 2004. Organizations such as STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, later under the umbrella of Genocide Intervention Network, and the Save Darfur Coalition emerged and became particularly active in the areas of engaging the United States Congress and President on the issue and pushing for divestment nationwide, initially launched by Adam Sterling under the auspice of the Sudan Divestment Task Force. Particularly strong advocates have additionally included: New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof, Sudan Scholar Eric Reeves, Enough Project founder John Prendergast, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, photographers Ryan Spencer Reed and Mark Brecke, former Marine Brian Steidle, actress Mia Farrow and her son Ronan Farrow, Olympian Joey Cheek, actress Angelina Jolie, actor George Clooney, Save Darfur Coalition's David Rubenstein, and all of those involved with the Genocide Intervention Network. A movement advocating for humanitarian intervention has emerged in several countries since then.
United Nations
Sudan's government has "orchestrated and participated in" war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, according to a report by UN investigators on 6 June 2005.
The report to the UN Human Rights Council said the situation in Darfur is "characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international law". It called for the UN Security Council to take "urgent" action to protect Darfur's civilians, including the deployment of a joint UN/African Union force and the freezing of funds and assets owned by officials complicit in the attacks. During the American Presidential Election campaign of 2008, Democratic nominee and ultimate winner Barack Obama said he would provide helicopters and logistics support to the AU.
An estimated three million people have been displaced and more than 200,000 have been killed since 2003. A peace deal was signed May 2006 by the government but by only one of the main rebel groups. The rest refused and the violence has only increased.
The head of the UN investigating team, the Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams, described the international response to the crisis as "pathetic".
The United States, Britain and the European Union have repeatedly condemned the atrocities but have failed to carry out any of their numerous threats. The US referred to the killings as genocide in 2004, while in 2006, Tony Blair said the situation was "completely unacceptable" and called for "urgent action". None of the resolutions passed by the Security Council regarding Darfur have been implemented.
Attempts to negotiate ceasefires and peace deals have been sporadic and piecemeal. A US Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson met President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum in January. He left trumpeting a 60-day ceasefire he had persuaded Mr Bashir to agree to. Within the week Sudanese planes were again dropping bombs in Darfur. Some 7,000 African Union troops are operating in Darfur but their limited resources and mandate has made it all but impossible for them to protect civilians. The force's 150 translators are on strike because they have not been paid since November.
A deal appeared to have been struck last November that would have allowed the AU mission to be strengthened into a 22,000-strong combined UN/AU force. However, President Bashir appears to have reneged on the agreement.
Jan Pronk, who was the head of the UN mission in Sudan until he was unceremoniously kicked out of the country by the Khartoum government, said Sudan had realized it could "get away with anything".
In a recent posting on his blog, Mr Pronk wrote that the Sudanese authorities have continued to "disregard Security Council resolutions, to break international agreements, to violate human rights and to feed and allow attacks on their own citizens. They could do all this without having to fear consequences. On the contrary, the Council and its members and the rest of the international community have been taken for a ride."
The Human Rights Council team faced similar problems. President Bashir promised UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that Sudan would co-operate fully with the inquiry, including granting access to Darfur. But despite more than a dozen attempts by the UN team to apply for visas, Khartoum refused to allow them into the country. Instead they travelled to eastern Chad where more than 230,000 Darfuri refugees have fled. The conflict has followed the refugees over the border, with Chadian Arabs - backed by Sudanese Janjaweed militia - attacking black tribes inside Chad.
In January 2005, the UN Secretary-General's International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur issued a well documented report that indicated that there was by then already some 1.6 million internally displaced persons as a result of the ongoing violence, more than 200,000 refugees from Darfur into neighbouring Chad, and that Government forces and allied militia had committed widespread and consistent war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture, mass rape, summary executions and arbitrary detention. The Commission found that technically there was not a genocide in the legal sense of the term but that massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law were continuing. The Commission also found that the Janjaweed militia operated alongside or with ground or air logistical support from the Government's armed forces.
In early 2007, a High Level Mission on the situation of human rights in Darfur was set up to look into reports of ongoing violations and to try to work with the Government of the Sudan to put a stop to the atrocities. The Mission was led by Nobel Prize Winner Jody Williams and included a number of diplomats and human rights practitioners. The Mission travelled to Ethiopia and Chad but it was never admitted into Sudanese territory itself because the Government refused to issue visas to the Mission. As a result, the High Level Mission could only collect information and in its report of March 2007, it underlined the Government's responsibility to protect civilians in Darfur, noting with regret the Government's abject failure to fulfill this responsibility.
International Criminal Court
As Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statute the International Criminal Court can not investigate crimes that may have taken place in Darfur unless the United Nations Security council asks them to under Article 13.b of the Rome Statute ("A situation in which one or more of such crimes appears to have been committed is referred to the Prosecutor by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations").
In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, but without mentioning any specific crimes. Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution. As of his fourth report to the Security Council, the Prosecutor has found "reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes," but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide.
In April 2007, the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmed Haroun, and a Militia Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Sudan Government says that the ICC had no jurisdiction to try Sudanese citizens and that it will not hand the two men over to its custody.
On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the ICC, filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The ICC's prosecutor for Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir. Leaders from three Darfur tribes are suing ICC prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo for libel, defamation, and igniting hatred and tribalism.
The evidence was submitted to 3 judges who will decide whether to issue an arrest warrant in the coming months. 300,000 people have died and 5 million or so Darfuri were forced from their homes, and still under attack from government-backed janjaweed militia. If formally charged, al-Bashir would become the first sitting head of state charged with genocide. Bashir has rejected the charges and said, "Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes ... will know that all of these things are lies."
It is suspected that al-Bashir would not face trial in The Hague any time soon, as Sudan rejects the ICC's jurisdiction. Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal and a former war crimes prosecutor, says although he may not go to trial, "He will effectively be in prison within the Sudan itself...Al-Bashir now is not going to be able to leave the Sudan without facing arrest." Nevertheless, since the indictment, Bashir made his first trip to Turkey.
Some analysts think that the ICC indictment is counterproductive. It is believed that the decision will hinder the efforts to establish peace in Darfur, and will undermine any effort to boost stability in Sudan. Some think that the ICC is guilty of exaggeration and hypocrisy with the indictment because of how those responsible for the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been prosecuted.
Most Arab and African governments have condemned the indictments, which some see as politically motivated. Some see the indictment as an attempt to blackmail Sudan and interfere in its internal affairs. Others expressed resentment towards what they call double standards on Sudan. It has been suggested that the ICC should have dealt all of the world's conflicts, such as Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. The Sudanese Government alleged that colonial powers are seeking to dominate their country. Some have interpreted the indictment as an attempt to overthrow the Sudanese Government. The African Union demanded the ICC to suspend the indictment against the Sudanese President. China expressed "serious concern" over the indictment. A foreign ministry spokesman urged the parties concerned to avoid complicating the situation in Sudan. The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on March 3, 2009. Elias Meseret contributed for this last sentence.
Criticism of international response
Gérard Prunier, a scholar specializing in African conflicts, argues that the world's most powerful countries have largely limited their response to expressions of concern and demands that the United Nations take action. The UN, lacking both the funding and military support of the wealthy countries, has left the African Union to deploy a token force (AMIS) without a mandate to protect civilians. In the lack of foreign political will to address the political and economic structures that underlie the conflict, the international community has defined the Darfur conflict in humanitarian assistance terms and debated the "genocide" label.
On 16 October 2006, Minority Rights Group (MRG) published a critical report, challenging that the UN and the great powers could have prevented the deepening crisis in Darfur and that few lessons appear to have been drawn from their ineptitude during the Rwandan Genocide. MRG's executive director, Mark Lattimer, stated that: "this level of crisis, the killings, rape and displacement could have been foreseen and avoided ... Darfur would just not be in this situation had the UN systems got its act together after Rwanda: their action was too little too late." On 20 October, 120 genocide survivors of The Holocaust, the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides, backed by six aid agencies, submitted an open letter to the European Union, calling on them to do more to end the atrocities in Darfur, with a UN peacekeeping force as "the only viable option." Aegis Trust director, James Smith, stated that while "the African Union has worked very well in Darfur and done what it could, the rest of the world hasn't supported those efforts the way it should have done with sufficient funds and sufficient equipment."
Human Rights First claimed that over 90% of the light weapons currently being imported by Sudan and used in the conflict are from China; however, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)'s "Arms Transfers Data for 2007", in 2003–2007, Sudan received 87 per cent of its major conventional weapons from Russia and 8 per cent from China. Human rights advocates and opponents of the Sudanese government portray China's role in providing weapons and aircraft as a cynical attempt to obtain oil and gas just as colonial powers once supplied African chieftains with the military means to maintain control as they extracted natural resources. According to China's critics, China has offered Sudan support threatening to use its veto on the U.N. Security Council to protect Khartoum from sanctions and has been able to water down every resolution on Darfur in order to protect its interests in Sudan. Accusations of the supply of weapons from China in breach of a UN arms embargo continue to arise.
There has been further evidence of the Sudanese government's murder of civilians to actually facilitate the extraction of oil. The U.S.-funded Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, which investigates attacks in southern Sudan concluded that "as the Government of Sudan sought to clear the way for oil exploration and to create a cordon sanitaire around the oil fields, vast tracts of the Western Upper Nile Region in southern Sudan became the focus of extensive military operations." Sarah Wykes, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, an NGO that campaigns for better natural resource governance, says: "Sudan has purchased about $100m in arms from China and has used these weapons against civilians in Darfur."
Calls for sustained pressure and possible boycotts of the Olympics have come from French presidential candidate François Bayrou, actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow, author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves and the Washington Post editorial board. Sudan divestment efforts have also concentrated on PetroChina, the national petroleum company with extensive investments in Sudan.
On the opposite side of the issue, publicity given to the Darfur conflict has been criticized in some segments of the Arab media as exaggerated. Statements to this effect take the view that the "lobby to save Darfur...is just the Israel lobby nicknamed", and by raising the issue of Darfur, Israeli lobby is trying "to divert attention from Israel's crimes, or the catastrophe of the war in Iraq", and that Western attention to the Darfur crisis is "a cover for what is really being planned and carried out by the Western forces of hegemony and control in our Arab world." While "in New York, ... there are thousands of nude posters screaming 'genocide' and '400,000 people dead," in reality only "200,000 have been killed." Furthermore, "what has been done" in Darfur is "not genocide," simply "war crimes." Another complaint made is that "there is no ethnic cleansing being perpetrated" in Darfur, only "great instability" and "clashes between the Sudanese government, rebel movements and the Janjaweed."
Mortality figures
Accurate numbers of dead have been difficult to estimate, partly because the Sudanese government places formidable obstacles in front of journalists attempting to cover the conflict.
In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include violent deaths. A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died, and others have estimated even more.
In March 2005, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland estimated that 10,000 were dying each month excluding deaths due to ethnic violence. An estimated 2 million people had at that time been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur's major towns. Two hundred thousand had fled to neighboring Chad. Reports of violent deaths compiled by the UN indicate between 6000 and 7000 fatalities from 2004 to 2007.
In an April 2005 report, the Coalition for International Justice estimated that 400,000 people in Darfur had died since the conflict began.
In May 2005, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the School of Public Health of the Université catholique de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium published an analysis of mortality in Darfur. Their estimate stated that from September 2003 to January 2005, between 98,000 and 181,000 persons had died in Darfur, including from 63,000 to 146,000 excess deaths.
On 28 April 2006, Dr. Eric Reeves argued that "extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000," but this has not been independently verified.
A 21 September 2006 article by the official UN News Service stated that "UN officials estimate over 400,000 people have lost their lives and some 2 million more have been driven from their homes." However, the UN disclosed on 22 April 2008 that it might have underestimated the Darfur death toll by nearly 50 percent.
In November 2006, the United States Government Accountability Office convened a group of experts to evaluate the different mortality figures for Darfur. These experts expressed the highest level of confidence in the estimates by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)."
Spreading of violence
Violence in Darfur spread over the border to Chad and the Central African Republic. In Chad, notably, the Janjaweed were accused of incursions and attacks.
Rape in Darfur
An 19 October 2004 UN News Centre article titled "UNICEF adviser says rape in Darfur, Sudan continues with impunity" reported:
Armed militias in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region are continuing to rape women and girls with impunity, an expert from the United Nations children’s agency said today on her return from a mission to the region. Pamela Shifman, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) adviser on violence and sexual exploitation, said she heard dozens of harrowing accounts of sexual assaults – including numerous reports of gang rapes – when she visited internally displaced persons (IDPs) at one camp and another settlement in North Darfur last week. “Rape is used as a weapon to terrorize individual women and girls, and also to terrorize their families and to terrorize entire communities,” she said in an interview with the UN News Service. "No woman or girl is safe."
In that article Pamela Shifman also reported:
Ms. Shifman said every woman or girl she spoke to had either endured sexual assault herself, or knew of someone who had been attacked, particularly when they left the relative safety of their IDP camp or settlement to find firewood.
See also
External links
- Rashdan, Abdelrahman, IslamOnline.net, Retrieved on 2007-09-13.
- : an article in the by Justin Willis, 7 November 2003
- - Displacement caused by the war in Darfur
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