Darfur Peacekeepers Need More Int'l Support, Say Groups
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WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 28 (OneWorld) - Human rights and international aid activists are demanding that the international community move swiftly to protect civilians in Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region, where rights researchers say they have obtained new eyewitness accounts of atrocities by government-backed militias.
''The world has failed to take sufficient action to protect civilians in Darfur. Horrifying atrocities have been committed on a massive scale and more suffering is being inflicted on a daily basis,'' international charity Oxfam said on Monday. Without stronger international backing, Oxfam said, ''every morning in hundreds of camps and towns across Darfur, nearly two million people made homeless by fighting wake up to another day of harassment, robbery and violent attacks.'' Human Rights Watch, which said it spoke with locals who had witnessed rapes, torture, killings, and aerial bombardments of towns and villages, demanded that the U.N. Security Council take decisive action on Darfur and refer cases involving atrocities to the International Criminal Court. It further urged the African Union (AU) to increase the number of troops it has deployed to the turbulent region. Oxfam assailed the international community for failing to protect civilians and urged the AU mission's main donors--chiefly, the European Union, United States, and United Nations--to immediately increase funding for the AU mission. Only half of the 3,320 personnel promised by the bloc of African countries in October 2004 have arrived and their efforts have been hindered by shortages of funding and poor logistical support, Oxfam said. ''A fully expanded AU mission in Darfur--including additional troops, ceasefire monitors, and civilian police--must be deployed at once,'' Caroline Nursey, Oxfam's regional director for the Horn of Africa, said in a statement. AU peacekeepers have been able to establish pockets of security in Darfur despite their severe constraints, said humanitarian group Refugees International. ''Though small and slow to deploy, the force has successfully headed off attacks, negotiated the release of hostages and provided enough security for some displaced villagers to return home,'' Refugees International president Ken Bacon said in a statement issued as he tours Darfur. ''These successes in the face of huge obstacles highlight the need for a bigger force with more logistical and financial support from the donors who are financing the AU deployment,'' Bacon added. The successes seem improbable for a force of only around 1,800 personnel in an area the size of Texas that boasts few roads, airfields and other infrastructure, vast deserts, high temperatures and a summer rainy season that turns everything to mud, Bacon said. Yet, U.N. and other observers credit the AU troops with saving lives in battle zones, although understaffing and poor training continue to hamper their efforts to work within refugee camps, he added. Rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government in early 2003, after years of tribal conflict over scarce resources in the arid region. They accused the government in Khartoum of neglect and of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages. Khartoum admits arming some militias to fight the rebels but denies any links to the Janjaweed, which it has called outlaws. The fighting has killed tens of thousands and forced some two million people from their homes. Human Rights Watch said it had new eyewitness accounts of rapes, torture, and attacks on villages by the Janjaweed--with government air support--in South Darfur in December and January. The group said this violated a ceasefire pact and agreements to cease hostile aerial activity. Some of the offensives appeared to target civilians as well as rebel bases in areas under the control of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. Human Rights Watch said that the largest rebel group in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army, also has attacked civilians, particularly in January around the South Darfur town of Malam. It called on the rebel movements to respect civilians and civilian infrastructure and to cease attacks on humanitarian workers and convoys. But it reserved its strongest criticism for Khartoum and the U.N. Security Council. ''The Sudanese government talks peace at the U.N. but then orders air strikes and militia raids against its own people in Darfur,'' said Peter Takirambudde, the rights watchdog's Africa director. ''The Security Council risks losing its relevance unless it finally takes meaningful steps to stop the atrocities in Darfur.'' The U.S. Congress has declared that genocide is taking place in Darfur and the U.S. State Department, under intense pressure from activists, has conducted its own investigations and sought to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution issuing a similar declaration. But the U.N. Security Council has stopped short of using the word, which would trigger international action against the Khartoum regime. Salih Booker, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Africa Action, attributed the inaction to Security Council members' own interests and to a loss of U.S. moral authority in the world body in the wake of now discredited claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. ''China is the single largest investor in Sudan's oil industry; Russia has significant arms deals with Khartoum, and both countries want to avoid scrutiny of their own internal wars against various ethnic communities,'' Booker said in a Foreign Policy in Focus commentary. ''Pakistan and Algeria have either ideological or political interests in helping the government in Sudan. All four abstained.'' Added Booker, ''Once upon a time, Washington could have exercised its clout as the most powerful nation in the world and handily won over the support of these recalcitrant members. But now, the country that cried wolf [over Iraq] has lost the moral authority it needs to rally its global neighbors.'' Sudanese officials have countered U.S. claims of genocide by saying that Washington presented a false dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and now is presenting a dossier against Sudan, another Arab state with oil, he said. ''Sadly, such cynical skepticism resonates in large parts of the world,'' said Booker. Security Council members are in the fourth week of discussing a new resolution that would authorize a U.N. ''peace support'' force of 10,000 personnel to monitor the peace agreement ending the 21-year civil war between the Sudanese government and the main southern-based rebel movement, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. The draft resolution, which focuses on southern Sudan, provides little relief for civilians in Darfur. It would impose travel sanctions and asset freezes on yet to be designated individuals for their involvement in human rights abuses, and extend an arms embargo on the Sudanese government's arms shipments to Darfur. |
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