تقارير - Reports

 

Darfur: The genocide the world got tired of

By Eric Reeves
November 24, 2011 — News coverage of the Darfur region of western Sudan, including eastern Chad, has all but vanished. Were it not for the efforts of the Sudan Tribune and Radio Dabanga, two extraordinary journalistic enterprises by Sudanese in the diaspora, Darfur would be largely reduced to the feeble visibility provided by media releases from UNAMID (the UN/African Union peacekeeping force in the region). These stultifying, self-serving dispatches convey nothing of the continuing violence and destruction that afflict Darfuris, both in the camps and rural areas, as well as in towns. The victims continue to be overwhelmingly from the African tribal groups of the region, who make up the vast majority of the more than 2 million people who remain uprooted, most from the most intense phase of Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency effort (April 2003 into early 2005). During the past eight and a half years, some 500,000 people have died from violence or the consequences of violent displacement.
Insecurity and deprivation also define the lives of the Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad, most of whom fled early in the conflict. There, as Human Rights authoritatively established with reports in 2006 and 2007, Khartoum pursued ethnically African Darfuris with Antonov bombers, and turned loose their savage Janjaweed militias (see especially "’They Came Here to Kill Us’: Militia Attacks and Ethnic Targeting of Civilians in Eastern Chad," January 2007 and "Darfur Bleeds: Recent Cross-Border Violence in Chad," February 2006). And yet eastern Chad is, if possible, even less visible than Darfur. But the crisis there continues to be enormous: the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates this year that there are some 285,000 refugees who remain near the Chad/Darfur border; these people are no closer to safe returns in substantial numbers than they were five years ago.
The figure for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Darfur has been badly politicised, particularly by the UN’s Georg Charpentier, who lowered the UN estimate for IDPs from 2.7 million to 1.9 million in July 2010---justifying this only on the basis of a footnote reference to a report by the International Organisation for Migration that did not exist, and still is not complete (the undertaking is in partnership with the UN World Food Program as part of an overdue re-registration effort in the camps). This was utterly disingenuous on Charpentier’s part, as is the consistent UN suggestion that the population of IDPs is equivalent to the populations in the camps. This is not so. It should be noted first that camp are populations highly fluid, especially during agriculturally important times of the year, and especially if lands abandoned are in walking distance. But the status of many other displaced persons is even more ambiguous, and a great many people have taken shelter with host families or villages, often far from their homes. This is an enormous population that has never shown up in the census calculations of IDP numbers based solely on camp registrations (this is true of the Darfuri refugee population in eastern Chad as well). To omit the figure for displaced persons not in the camps---without even acknowledging that this population exists, and that it is very substantial---is but another form of disingenuousness on the part of Charpentier and the UN/AU joint special representative for Darfur, Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria.
Security for these displaced persons remains appallingly inadequate. Despite Gambari’s fatuously self-serving public claims, UNAMID is almost completely dysfunctional in protecting civilians. Certainly Darfuris are uniformly scathing in their assessment of UNAMID’s performance and protection abilities. It is true that large-scale armed conflict between Khartoum (along with its Arab militia allies) and the rebel groups has declined in recent months; but we have seen such declines a number of times over the past eight years, and invariably fighting has resumed (moreover, two ominous recent reports indicate that dry season fighting may be about to begin). Khartoum has for the present re-deployed a great many of its military air assets to el-Obeid (North Kordofan), to South Kordofan, and to Blue Nile---including a newly expanded air field near recently captured Kurmuk (southern Blue Nile). This expansion includes helipads for combat helicopters, both gunships and troop-ferrying aircraft. From these locations, Khartoum’s military aircraft are engaged in what all accounts suggest is daily bombardment and aerial attacks on civilians, including refugees from South Kordofan who have made it to South Sudan.
Reduced fighting in Darfur, almost certainly temporary, thus gives the world an excuse to pretend that UNAMID is somehow an adequate international response to the violence and continued displacement; in fact, it is yet another in a long line of obscene failures to make the ’responsibility to protect’ something more than a feel-good exhortation. It is worth noting that since UNAMID officially took up its mandate on January 1, 2008, almost 1 million Darfuris have been newly displaced, according to figures from the UN High Commission for Refugees. This vast number in itself makes nonsense of Charpentier’s claim that the number of IDPs may be reduced by over 800,000, a claim that Khartoum delights in.
The realities of human security in Darfur are simply not represented in any meaningful fashion by a thoroughly intimidated UN; this in turn offers special representative Gambari the opportunity to make any number of absurd claims about the success of the mission he now oversees, and which he clearly hopes to use as a stepping-stone in his career (much as his disastrous performance in Burma won him appointment by Ban Ki-moon to his present position). But the causes for concern are many, and the daily violence experienced by Darfuris, even without major fighting or regular aerial bombardment, needs some meaningful accounting. There should be, for example, major concerns about the mercenaries who have returned to Darfur from Libya, with their substantial weaponry. These men could easily become an additional source of insecurity for civilians, but UNAMID has said nothing that suggests it even perceives a threat.
Further, the epidemic of rape that has stalked Darfur for more than eight years continues; Radio Dabanga provides continuing accounts on this immensely destructive phenomenon, which is rippling cruelly through families and generations. (See below for a compendium of recent reports on the continuing outrage of widespread rape, including the rape of girls, with no accountability.) Camps continue to be attacked, rural farms seized, civilians casually murdered, and arson is deployed more frequently as a means of destroying key institutions, including schools.
The Central Reserve Police, or Abu Tira, are now Khartoum’s primary instrument of destruction and intimidation, and they operate throughout Darfur with total impunity, sustaining a climate of fear and violence that at once endangers humanitarian operations and presents intolerable threats to civilians. Julie Flint offers a perspicuous overview of this force:
"A gendarmerie officially under the Interior Ministry, although more likely at the behest of the [former] National Intelligence and Security Service of Salah Gosh, the Central Reserve Police has become increasingly active in the conflict in Darfur (and neighbouring Kordofan). Some analysts believe this is a result of the reduced effectiveness of the Popular Defence Forces, a paramilitary group that has taken on a political dimension that makes it more useful as a political rallying tool than a fighting force; others link it to restrictions imposed on Sudan Armed Forces by the Darfur Peace Agreement. In 2004, the Central Reserve Police opened a training centre in Musa Hilal’s Misteriha barracks in North Darfur." ("Beyond ’Janjaweed’: Understanding the Militias of Darfur," Small Arms Survey [Geneva], June 2009).
It was Musa Hila, the most notorious of the Janjaweed leaders, who announced in 2004 the ambition that still animates Khartoum’s efforts in Darfur: "change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes."
None of this is suggested anywhere in UNAMID’s representation of conditions in Darfur.
"Peace for our time?"
Various disingenuously optimistic claims have been made for the Darfur "peace agreement" signed in Doha, Qatar (July 14, 2011), but the political and military realities on the ground in Darfur hardly justify optimism of any sort. For only the militarily weak and politically unviable Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) signed with Khartoum, reflecting a strategic error by mediators in Doha, one foreseen by Sudan analyst Laura Jones and others. For by reaching agreement with this cobbled together and unrepresentative faction, the regime can now declare it has signed a peace agreement and will not re-open negotiations. Unsurprisingly, Khartoum has consistently declared since the July signing that the agreement is final and that it is up to the other rebel groups to join el-Tigani Sissi’s LJM.
But Sissi has lost a great deal of political influence among Darfuris since he was governor in the 1980s, even among his largely Fur constituencies; many hold him at least partly responsible for accommodating Khartoum in ways that led to the present catastrophe. Though commonly dated to 2003, the first stages of the war actually began in 2002, and this violence in turn can be traced back to yet earlier instances of ethnically-targeted violence, including large-scale destruction of the Massalit people in 1999 and even to the Fur-Arab war of 1987-89. Sissi has too much baggage from this period, and he and the LJM simply cannot bring Darfuris to accept this peace agreement; present strife in the camps around the Doha agreement makes this painfully clear.
So it is not surprising that Khartoum refused to attend a forum on Darfur in Washington this month, organized by US special envoy Princeton Lyman: the regime will do nothing that might suggest that actual negotiations of the agreement might be re-opened. The Doha agreement is a failure, one all too predictable, especially given the unseemly infighting among the facilitators (including Gambari, the AU’s Thabo Mbeki, and former joint negotiator Djibril Bassolé) and the indifferent response by international actors of consequence, including the US and the EU. Khartoum will now simply ignore any demand that negotiations be expanded to include the more powerful rebel groups, or indeed the vast majority of Darfuri civil society, which has never been adequately represented in the peace talks because of Khartoum’s relentless obstructionism. The pursuit of peace in Darfur, as represented by the Doha agreement, is simply a charade, aiding Khartoum and allowing the US and others to keep up the appearance of doing something meaningful.
The diplomatic realities are not lost on the politically and militarily more powerful rebel groups; and in what has for months seemed inevitable, an alliance has now been formed by the major military factions among the Darfur rebel groups---including the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) of Abdel Wahid el-Nur, the SLA of Minni Minawi, and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) of Khalil Ibrahim---and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLA/M-N). There are doubts that this alliance will prove militarily viable, which formally came into existence, after long negotiations, on November 11; but it seems foolish to underestimate what these forces can achieve collectively, especially as the movement (known as the Sudan Revolutionary Front, SRF) continues to grow. On November 18 the Beja Congress---the most powerful element of the former Eastern Front during the civil war---joined the RDF. So too did the Koch Revolution Movement. And the brutally marginalized people of Nubia also seem likely to become part of this military and political coalition which has a single goal: regime change.
There are many who argue that Khartoum, for its part, can’t afford a return to war (and that the South can’t either), and that fears of country-wide conflict are unwarranted. And certainly the economy in the North is in disastrous shape, with many severely negative indicators: high inflation; virtually no foreign exchange reserves; the plunging value of the Sudanese pound; growing unemployment; substantial losses of oil revenues; a hugely expensive military and security complex; the need for fiscal austerity, including removing highly popular subsidies for sugar and petrol; and external debt in excess of $38 billion, which can’t be serviced, let alone repaid.
But in the eyes of the generals who seized power earlier this year in a "creeping military coup," one obvious solution is to seize and hold Southern oil fields and thereby boost oil revenues. The revenues from Southern oil production were formerly divided 50/50 between Khartoum and Juba; however, if Khartoum were to succeed in capturing and holding some of the more productive concession areas, they would of course take 100 percent of the revenues. Phillip Aguer, military spokesman for the (Southern) Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) declared---in light of Khartoum’s continuing cross-border air, ground, and artillery assaults---"this is an oil war now." There is strong evidence that he is right.
Humanitarian Conditions in Darfur
International attention to the crises in the border regions of Abyei, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan---however weak and unfocused---has certainly contributed substantially to Darfur’s invisibility. The Obama administration decision of a year ago to "de-couple" Darfur from negotiations between Washington and Khartoum on issues of terrorism was taken by the regime officials as a sign that if it allowed the Southern self-determination referendum to take place as scheduled, and accepted the inevitable vote for secession, then other issues in Sudan would become less exigent---at least diplomatically.
Partly as a consequence of this US signal, humanitarian conditions in a "de-coupled" Darfur remain almost completely obscured by Khartoum’s intimidation of both the UN and international relief organisations, which fear to promulgate data or reports that have not been approved by the regime. Moreover, there are exceedingly few workers in the "deep field" (areas well away from the urban centers, where UNAMID forces and humanitarian personnel are concentrated). Huge parts of Darfur are either too insecure to receive humanitarian assistance---or that assistance is bluntly denied by Khartoum. We have some crude barometers of well-being; but particularly in the arena of malnutrition, data and reports are scandalously few. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, for example, found in an investigative report that,
"UNICEF reported early last year that as many as 21 nutritional surveys were conducted since June 2009, but only seven have been released by [Khartoum’s] humanitarian affairs commission [HAC]. Six of those showed [Global Acute] malnutrition rates of between 15 and 29 per cent, the report stated."
The emergency threshold for malnutrition is a GAM rate of 15 percent or greater.
Under the dispensation of Charpentier, virtually nothing has been released, as he abjectly defers to Khartoum’s wishes. Indeed, he has gone so far as lie on behalf of the regime, declaring that "UN humanitarian agencies are not confronted by pressure or interference from the Government of Sudan"; but countless reports, including many from UN agencies, insistently and authoritatively contradict this outrageous mendacity. Indeed, Nils Kastberg, chief UNICEF representative in Darfur, declared in October 2010:
"[T]he Sudanese government ’very often’ bars the release of data on child malnutrition in Darfur. Sudanese security services have also hindered or delayed UNICEF’s access to camps in Darfur, [Kastberg said]: ’Part of the problem has been when we conduct surveys to help us address issues, in collaboration with the ministry of health, very often other parts of the government such as the humanitarians affairs commission interferes and delays in the release of reports, making it difficult for us to respond timely."
"UN cooperation with the Khartoum ministries like the Ministry of Health has failed to secure publication of the reports. [ ] Kastberg also pointed out that certain government agencies hinder the entry of UNICEF staff into the camps. ’Sometimes it is security services that hinder access or delay access, sometimes it is the humanitarian affairs office that delays the release of nutritional surveys. Sometimes it is delays in granting permissions and visas. It is different sections of different institutions which interfere in our work.’"
An unreleased study by Tufts University (January 2011), assessing the evidence available and the shortcomings in humanitarian information, concluded:
"Crucial information about the humanitarian situation is lacking. There are serious issues with the proper validation of the nutrition survey reports and their immediate release---without such data neither the government nor the international community can properly understand the severity of the humanitarian situation or the efficacy of the response." ("Navigating Without a Compass: The Erosion of Humanitarianism in Darfur," January 2011)
The Tufts report also notes that the limited data we have reflect "an extremely poor nutritional situation with implications for functional outcomes of mortality and morbidity risk." Put more simply, people are becoming ill and dying because they don’t have enough food to eat. The report notes as well "several causes for concern with regard to the reporting of humanitarian indicators," especially in the context of "frequent claims [that] the situation is stable":
"The regular occurrence of emergency levels of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) on a seasonal basis, which are ignored by the international community. If the emergency benchmark of 15% is felt not to apply to Darfur, this needs to be properly explained and justified based on evidence."
"The poor reporting by UNICEF on the available malnutrition estimates, which buries GAM estimates by scattering them about within the report, thus making it harder for readers to evaluate."
"The reported blocking of the release of nutrition survey reports…."
"What little data was available is subject to spin and obfuscation. A closer look at the data reflects an alarming situation about which there is no clear commentary or analysis by the UN technical agencies concerned."
"The problems with the nutrition data illustrate wider problems of the potential for manipulation of data…."
And most grimly, the major conclusion of the Tufts reports, a conclusion that remains as true now as it was at the beginning of the year:
"…international humanitarian capacities have been seriously eroded and impaired to a point that leaves Darfuris in a more vulnerable position now than at any other time since the counterinsurgency operations and forced displacements in 2003 and early 2004." ("Navigating Without a Compass: The Erosion of Humanitarianism in Darfur")
Compounding the problems diagnosed in the Tuft report are the increasing difficulties in raising funds to support continuation of humanitarian efforts in Darfur after so many years, especially given Khartoum’s hostility to international nongovernmental humanitarian organisations (INGOs). Medair, for example, will withdraw from Darfur by the end of the year (December 2011) because of lack of funding, with enormous consequences: the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) notes in a recent Sudan Weekly Humanitarian Bulletin (October 20) that the "health programme of Medair serves approximately 324,000 people ... in West Darfur." (Some 80 percent of functioning health clinics in West Darfur are run by international aid organisations or UN agencies.) In another telling example, according to the November 3 OCHA Bulletin UNICEF found over the past month "that in Zamzam IDP camp (North Darfur) 95 percent of water points ... show some degree of contamination." The necessary humanitarian resources are simply not available.
Moreover, many humanitarian organisations have been targeted by forces that Khartoum either controls, or chooses not to control; in turn, some of these organisations are a single incident away from withdrawing altogether. Last March Catholic Relief Services, which alone distributes food to almost half a million people in West Darfur, was on the very edge of withdrawal because of Khartoum’s threatening behavior. And other organisations have simply been expelled: in February of this year Khartoum expelled Médecins du Monde, the key provider of primary medical care in the populous Jebel Marra region, on the ludicrous charge of espionage. This sent yet another blunt and chilling message to remaining organisations: if you go where we don’t wish you to go; if you serve people we don’t wish you to serve; if you reveal what you see on the ground; or if we wish to take another step in moving from humanitarian assistance to "development work," we will kick you out of Darfur.
The reports on Darfur previously prepared by OCHA were quarterly, data-rich reports of considerable length, detailing humanitarian conditions (the "Darfur Humanitarian Profiles"). These ceased after Khartoum expelled thirteen international humanitarian organisations in March 2009, and the last report (No. 34) represents conditions at the end of 2008, almost three years ago. Charpentier, the chief OCHA official in Sudan, seems untroubled by such a gaping lack in information provided to the international community about humanitarian realities in Darfur.
[My own assessments of humanitarian conditions, based on all extant evidence, have been offered at a number of points over the past two years: "Darfur: No Way Forward from a Dangerous and Unsustainable Situation," (August 30, 2011); "Darfur Pushed Further into the Shadows" (in two parts, July 27, 2011); "Darfur Humanitarian Overview: The Consequences of International Silence," (January 23, 2011); "Darkness Visible: The UN Looks at Darfur but Refuses to See" (October 26, 2010; Dissent Magazine, on-line); "Darfur Humanitarian Update: August 31, 2010"; "Humanitarian Conditions in Darfur: An Overview," (in two parts, June 19, 2010 and July 3, 2010); "Civilians at Risk: Human Security and Humanitarian Aid in Darfur" (January 17, 2010).]
HUMAN SECURITY IN DARFUR
My primary concern in what follows is to represent the continuing deterioration in human security throughout Darfur, as reported, almost singularly, by Radio Dabanga. UNAMID is essentially worthless in its representations, offering only fitful and anodyne press releases that give no sense of the scale or ferocity or ethnically-targeted nature of violence in the region. Indeed, many of the Radio Dabanga dispatches reveal how deeply Darfuri anger runs over UNAMID’s failures to respond to urgent pleas or to report even egregious cases of violence against civilians.
This survey of what Radio Dabanga has reported over the past three months (including a very few earlier examples) gives a sense, if only partial, of just how widespread and destructive violence continues to be. (All emphasis in the dispatches has been added by the author.)
[1] Rape as a Weapon of War
Rape remains one of the very most consequential weapons of war deployed by Khartoum, chiefly by the "Janjaweed" and the various paramilitary forces into which the regime has recycled them. It is here that UNAMID has proved most completely inadequate to the tasks of confirming, investigating, reporting, or preventing rape---something that Mr. Gambari finds no occasion to mention. There is a terrible familiarity to the accounts of rape, but the sustained analyses and reports we do have provide a still-terrifying picture of brutality, pain, humiliation, and death. In March of this year I wrote at some length about what we have long known, and what several on-the-ground studies have revealed. There is little more that can be said generally about these unspeakable atrocities, constituting in many case war crimes, and in aggregate crimes against humanity. Article 7 of the Rome Statute ("Crimes Against Humanity") declares that among the acts that may constitute crimes against humanity are: "Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" (7.1.g).
To date much of the international community, including various UN agencies and the African Union, has simply not accepted either the scale or gravity of these crimes. This is a major failing. Below are a number of representative accounts from Radio Dabanga, just from the past two months. It should be noted that Radio Dabanga uses the term "shepherds" in these accounts to refer to nomadic pastoralists in Darfur, overwhelmingly from Arab tribes and the source of the "Janjaweed" and other militia and paramilitary forces, either controlled or sanctioned by Khartoum. I would emphasize how often the victims of rape are children, many of them under 15 years of age, some as young as eight or nine. Prosecution for the crime of rape is virtually non-existent in Darfur, creating a climate of impunity that encourages more such brutal crimes:
• Serial rape crimes in West Darfur (MORNEI [West Darfur], November 17) A series of rape crimes were committed in West Darfur’s Mornei region this week, witnesses told Radio Dabanga on Thursday. Two refugee women were raped in Mornei region’s Kabiri Valley on Tuesday, one in Aro Valley on the same day and two others in Mornei refugee camp on Monday. In all cases, armed shepherds [again, meaning "nomadic pastoralists"---ER] were accused of the rapes. Radio Dabanga cannot confirm whether all crimes were committed by the same group. In Tuesday’s incident, two refugee women were raped in their farms in Kabiri Valley by five armed shepherds. "The shepherd militiamen raped the women after they had brought their livestock on to the farms. An elderly person in the farm objected their behavior but the shepherds beat him, tied him with ropes and raped the women," a sheikh from Mornei camp told Radio Dabanga. He added that they fled the scene of crime soon after.
In a separate incident on the same day three shepherds with guns raped one woman from Mornei refugee camp in Aro Valley. The woman was harvesting food crops when she got raped, the sheikh said. He added that shepherds, who were wearing military uniforms, assaulted the refugee in the field earlier. The refugee was taken to the hospital for treatment in a serious condition after the gang rape.
In Ronga Tash in Mornei locality, two women refugees were raped by five armed shepherds riding horses and camels on Monday. The shepherds had allegedly fired on their farms and raped the women on the farm collectively after beating them.
• Woman gang-raped in West Darfur (GARSILA, November 23) Armed herders wearing military uniforms accused of committing the crime Armed herders gang-raped a 32-year-old displaced woman from West Darfur’s Wadi Dawari locality on Wednesday, a witness told Radio Dabanga. Three herders were allegedly involved in the killing which took place 3 km from the city of West Garsila. A witness told Radio Dabanga that the perpetrators were wearing military uniforms. “They attacked the refugee in a farm and beat her severely and then gang-raped her and fled,” a witness said. One of sheikhs from the camps in Garsila told Radio Dabanga that they had filed a complaint with the police and that the woman was taken to hospital for treatment. The sheikh appealed to the UNAMID through Radio Dabanga to set up centers in the camps in Garsila to monitor and protect the displaced persons and refugees. The sheikh asserted that more than 8,000 displaced people in the camps, were in need of protection from abuses and attacks.
• Armed group rapes student (EL FASHER, November 11) Witnesses accuse that the crime has an ethnic dimension A group of unidentified armed men reportedly raped a student from the region of Azban in Tawaisha, North Darfur on Wednesday. Witnesses told Radio Dabanga that the crime was committed on ethnic lines. The group allegedly demanded other women belonging to the same ethnicity to leave the village immediately after they had raped the student. A witness said that a militia group on board two cars as well as horse and camel-backs attacked the group of women who were gathering harvests from their farms. Subsequently, they raped the 17-year-old student who was helping her mother in the farm.
He also stated the militia group beat other women who were unable to flee and demanded that the women leave the village immediately, threatening to kill them if they return to gather harvests again. The witness added that one of the sheikhs from the village intervened and welcomed the women in his house. He also appealed to the authorities of North Darfur and the commissioner of Tawaisha county to protect civilians and put an end to the prevalent violations committed by local militias which target civilians on ethnic basis in the region.
•Three Teenagers Raped in West Darfur (GARSILA, November 6) An unidentified armed group raped three teenage refugees in West Darfur’s Garsila camp on Friday, witnesses told Radio Dabanga. "Three gunmen took the women from the village of Amarjadid in Western Garsila. The women were aged 14, 15 and 17," a witness told Radio Dabanga. The women were only released on Sunday, after being raped by the men for the entire day, the witness said. Refugees have reported the crime with the police of Amarjadid. Further sheikhs and mayors in the area told Radio Dabanga that the ones who committed the rapes are notorious criminals known to everyone.
• Two women raped in El Geneina (El-Geneina, October 13) Victims call on UNAMID to provide more protection to women Armed men raped two displaced women in El Geneina, West Darfur on Tuesday. A relative of the victims told Radio Dabanga that three displaced women went out on Tuesday to gather hay from the bushes, 6 kilometers away from the camp. Gunmen appeared to the group and captured and raped two of them, the remaining one having managed to escape. They filed a report at the police and called on the UNAMID to provide more protection to the displaced people in camps in Darfur, especially women who go out to collect firewood or hay from the bushes and forest.
• Two minors raped in North Darfur (KABKABIYA, October 2) Government-backed militia accused of being behind both incidences A government-backed armed militia group raped a minor residing in Horse Race Camp in North Darfur’s Kabkabiya region on Saturday. A relative of the rape victim told Radio Dabanga that the 12-year-old girl was returning with her five-year-old brother after logging when four armed militants kidnapped her and took turns at raping her. The victim was abducted from Kabkabiya military post. "They hit her five-year-old brother and tied him to a tree trunk. The police have refused to look for the perpetrators. They even said they wouldn’t come along to search for the victim," the relative said. Another minor raped Another 14-year-old refugee was raped on Saturday by a group of gunmen affiliated to the government in Shuba area, south of Kabkabiya, witnesses told Radio Dabanga. The three men accused of having committed the crime arrived on horsebacks to kidnap the girl when she was working in the farm. They then gang-raped her and did not release her until the following day. Reports of rapes by government-backed forces have undergone a steep rise in recent times.
• Gunmen kill refugee, rape his wife (NERTITI, October 19) The unidentified persons arrived on camels; witnesses have reported a case with the police Gunmen on camels killed a refugee and raped his wife in South Darfur’s Manouashi area on Friday, witnesses told Radio Dabanga. Adam Shanab, the deceased refugee, lived along with his wife in Manouashi refugee camp in Hamada village. Three armed men on camels allegedly raided his house on Friday morning and tried to rape his wife in front of him. Residents of the village, who bore witness to the incident, told Radio Dabanga that the armed men shot Adam Shanab when he confronted them. After having killed Adam Shanab, the unidentified armed men took turns to rape his wife at gunpoint. The villagers arrived at the crime scene when they heard commotion which led to the fleeing of the armed men. Witnesses have filed a report with the Nertiti police station, where they also left the camels that had been left behind by the gunmen.
• Policemen rape minor in West Darfur (EL GENEINA, November 21) Two policemen allegedly raped a nine-year-old girl from El Geneina in West Darfur on Monday, a relative of the victim told Radio Dabanga. The relative told Radio Dabanga that the girl, who lived in Abu Zr refugee camp, had been asked to fetch water by her mother before sunset. "On her way back home, she was passing the Ministry of Finance. That’s when one of the security guards called her and asked her to enter the ministry to collect buckthorn," the relative said. He added that when the girl entered the ministry, the guard and his colleague held the girl captive and took turns at raping her. Relatives of the victim stated that a report had been filed with the police in El Geneina. The police in turn arrested the perpetrators and placed them under custody while the child was transferred to the hospital for treatment.
[Again, prosecution for rape in Darfur is virtually non-existent; thus, despite the arrest of these two policemen for this unspeakable crime, it is highly unlikely they will be tried or convicted or punished. The Sudan Tribune reported on August 17 (Khartoum):
Sudan appoints new Darfur prosecutor August 16, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese Ministry of Justice has tipped its undersecretary to replace the special prosecutor for Darfur, Abdel-Dayem Zumrawi, who tendered his resignation four months ago. Sudan created the position of a special prosecutor for Darfur in 2003 in order to prove its seriousness in going after the perpetrators of crimes allegedly committed in the course of the Sudanese government’s war against armed rebels in the western region of Darfur. But the two prosecutors who occupied the position before have failed to try or bring charges against any individual despite credible reports of atrocities committed during the zenith of the conflict in 2003 and 2004. On Tuesday, the ministry of justice announced that its undersecretary, Councilor Issam Abdul Gadir Al-Zain, will proceed to the position of a special prosecutor for Darfur, which has been vacant since the former prosecutor Zumrawi officially resigned in mid-April.]
[2] Attacks on camps for displaced persons
Such attacks are increasing and appear to be part of Khartoum’s plan for forced returns of the displaced. The targets are often schools, local leaders (sheikhs and omdas), and political activists. They are immensely demoralizing to the populations that are forced by lack of security to remain in the camps:
• Darfur camps targeted by random attacks (October 10) Witnesses urge UNAMID to protect civilians from attacks Armed men on Land Cruiser cars opened heavy fires at Khams Dagaig camp (Zalingei, West Darfur) on Sunday, sparking terror and fear among the residents. The Zalingei camps’ coordinator accused the government of being behind the incident, and stated to have informed UNAMID of the attack, Radio Dabanga was told. No procedure seems to have been initiated by the Mission in response so far, and the coordinator appealed to UNAMID to play its role as a protector of civilians against random attacks. On a similar note, Sheikh Adam Abakr Gosh, who supervises Hamidiya camp’s Block 7, was beaten up by a group of men as he was returning from Zalingei to the camp. The armed men are said to have stripped the sheikh of his clothes, beat him and taken all his belongings.
West Darfur is not the only region affected by random attacks, as armed men opened heavy fires in all three Seraf Umra camps (Donkoj, Naseem and Jebel), North Darfur. The operation triggered panic and fear among the inhabitants. The coordinator of Seraf Umra’s camps also accused the government of masterminding the attacks, suspecting it from resorting to affiliated groups to carry them out. Leading figures from the targeted camps stated that the firing started at Naseem camp, moved on to Jebel camp to finally reach the Donkoj camp for displaced people. One of the camps’ leaders in Seraf Umra told Radio Dabanga that UNAMID has been informed of the incident, but that its officials had explained that nothing could be done without prior permission from the Sudanese police force or the Seraf Umra commissioner.
In Zamzam camp, soldiers from the central back-up forces---also known as Abu Tira---attacked a displaced person using the ends of their rifles in Zamzam market on Monday afternoon. The incident happened in front of a crowd of people, with the motives behind the attack remaining unclear. Witnesses told radio Dabanga that the soldiers left the displaced person drowning in his blood before opening heavy fires randomly in the air. Traders from the market were forced to close their shops as displaced people complained of repeated violations carried out by Abu Tira forces, appealing to UNAMID and the UN to protect the camp’s residents from such attacks.
• Army accused of assaulting refugees (EL GENEINA, November 2) Displaced people were heading back home from the Mornei Tuesday market Sudanese army personnel gathered and beat a group of displaced people in West Darfur’s Mornei camp on Tuesday, witnesses told Radio Dabanga. Five men in military uniforms allegedly used sticks and whips to beat refugees when they were walking back to their homes from the Tuesday market. Four of the perpetrators were reportedly on camels and the fifth was riding a horse. One witness told Radio Dabanga, "The men beat refugees severely and wounded a number of them. Some are seriously injured seriously and have been taken to the hospital to receive treatment." He added that one of those injured was a woman who was in the seventh month of her pregnancy. The witness said that such attacks were a regular feature, especially on the days of the market. "We do not dare inform the UNAMID (United Nations African Mission in Darfur) about these incidents because in the past people who have complained have been arrested. The UNAMID also doesn’t move in any area in Mornei without the permission of the Sudanese police," he added.
• Omda Killed in West Darfur (EL GENEINA, November 8) Refugees say they traced the perpetrators to a military camp in Jebel Al Kabir. Ahmed Abdallah Yahya, omda (local leader) of Manjora, in northern Sirba locality of West Darfur was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Monday, witnesses told Radio Dabanga. According to witness accounts, the [incident] took place when the omda, also a trader, closed down his shop at the market in Sirba. While he was returning from work, he was stopped by the armed men who fired at him. "The omda died on the spot. The panic led to the refugees to go in search of the perpetrators. They said that the men disappeared into the military camp in Jebel Al Kabir in western Sirba," one of the witnesses told Radio Dabanga.
• NISS arrests refugee from Hamidiya (Zalingei, October 28) Though no charges have been filed, he has been detained in a camp The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) arrested a refugee from Hamidiya camp in Zalingei, West Darfur on Thursday. Ibrahim Mohamed Ahmed Juma was arrested by the security service without any charge and taken to NISS base in Zalingei. An activist in the camp told Radio Dabanga that he feared Ibrahim Mohamed Ahmed Juma was being tortured and demanded his immediate release. Zalingei has seen an increase in violent crimes in the last week with a civilian being shot dead on Thursday and a student being killed on Wednesday. In a separate incident, three unidentified gunmen broke into the house of Dr Abdel Salam Juma, a professor at University of Zalingei, on Thursday morning and opened fire.
• Armed group opens fire (Zalingei, September 26) Shooting takes place in Hamidiya camp; camp coordinator accuses LJM and government-backed forces for the attacks A group of five gunmen opened fire on West Darfur’s Hamidiya refugee camp on Saturday. The shooting that continued until Monday morning has led to some refugees fleeing the camps and the burning down of a few huts, coordinator of the Zalingei camps told Radio Dabanga. The coordinator of the camps accused members of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) and government-backed forces of being behind the firing. "They are targeting people in the camps who reject the Doha peace agreement," he said.
•Armed violence kills four in North Darfur (El Fasher [North Darfur] Sept 14) Another refugee shot dead in El Fasher’s Abushok camp An armed group killed four people in Dermh village of Korma locality in North Darfur on Wednesday. A witness told Radio Dabanga that an armed group riding on the backs of camels and horses raided the village of Dermh in the wee hours of the morning and killed four civilians. The group also looted their property and three camels. The source suggested that panic now grips the village as the hunt for the militants continues.
• Refugee shot dead in El Fasher (El Fasher, September 14) [In] El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, unknown assailants shot down a refugee in Camp Abushok on Tuesday. A resident of the camp, who does not wish to be named fearing retribution from authorities, told Radio Dabanga, that Ibrahim Yusuf Adam was killed while he was on his way to Asalaam camp. He also accused the government militias of having a hand in Ibrahim’s murder, "There are random shootings taking place on an everyday basis. Political activists and leaders in the camp get harassed by government authorities to silence their voices."
• Refugee shot dead in North Darfur (Kabkabiya, November 9) He was killed by armed men after he attempted to rescue girls from being raped A refugee, Ahmed Saleh, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Al Matar neighborhood of North Darfur’s Kabkabiya locality on Tuesday. Witnesses told Radio Dabanga that 52-year-old Adam Saleh was killed after he tried rescuing some girls in his neighborhood from four armed gunmen who were trying to rape them. "Saleh heard distressed calls from the girls and went to intervene. He tried to shake away one of the men who was trying to abduct a girl. But another armed man with a gun opened fire and loaded nine bullets into Saleh’s chest which led to his immediate death," the witness said.
Witnesses also told Radio Dabanga that the incident had been reported immediately to the local police and the United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), which has an office 300 metres from the crime scene. "But they only came to the site next morning. And when they arrived, some residents in the neighborhood gathered and pelted stones at the UNAMID personnel while chanting slogans demanding the prosecution of the offenders," a witness recounted.
[3] Attacks on villages, towns, and markets
Despite the absence of large-scale hostilities---touted by special representative Gambari in ways that are predictably both self-serving and disingenuous---attacks on villages, towns, and markets are a relentless feature of life in Darfur today. Below are only a few recent examples:
• Government burns down four villages (Tabit [North Darfur] September 29) Government forces in Tabit area of North Darfur allegedly burned down two villages on Wednesday, one of the villagers who fled the scene told Radio Dabanga. The witness said, "Nearly 17 vehicles with Sudanese army troops were on their way from Tabit to Shengel Tubaya when the intensive gunfire took place. Two villages of Tangarara and Um Kafalu villages have been burned down as a result of the fire and many have fled their homes to the mountains and valleys nearby." He accused the government forces of looting the property of citizens and beating residents. Four men were arrested and tortured during the incident. He also pointed out that the same forces were responsible for burning down Sharafa, Um Gujja and Um Al Karo villages on Tuesday as well as looting the property of civilians.
Gunmen kill four traders An armed group killed four civilians and injured another in a shoot out in North Darfur’s Goz Kul area on Thursday, a witness told Radio Dabanga. The armed group of nearly 35 people were traveling in a Land Cruiser loaded with dushka guns. The group opened fire on a group of nine traders who were on their way from Nyala to Jeriban. The group that attacked also looted nearly 1500 livestock from the traders, one of them told Radio Dabanga.
• Sudan forces coming from Jebel Marra cause panic in Zalingei, wound 8 (ZALINGEI, June 26) Eight civilians from Zalingei were wounded on Tuesday and Wednesday in random shootings by government forces which were coming from Jebel Mara. Witnesses said that the wounded people included four displaced people, one of them named Nasr Eldin Suleiman Ahmed. The coordinator of camps in Zalingei told Radio Dabanga that the forces were returning back from battles with the armed factions in Jebel Mara and opened fire randomly, leading to the wounding of civilians and causing panic in the city and camps of the displaced people.
• 17 civilians of Abu Zereiga executed, fighting increases in Darfur (Zalingei, June 7) A local militia of Shangil Tobaya executed seventeen (17) civilians from Abu Zereiga by firing squad after tying their hands behind their backs and splitting them into three groups with the first two groups comprising seven people and the third group comprising three. The 17 people were kidnapped a week ago when they went to retrieve a herd of 250 cattle. Witnesses stated that as the group returned after retrieving the cattle, they were attacked by government forces backed by local militias on seventeen Land Cruisers that had machine guns attached to them along with other different kind of weapons and two military helicopters.
They claimed the helicopters bombarded the areas and fired at the group which was unarmed and confirmed that the group raised their arms in surrender and, as a result, the military forces kidnapped seventeen civilians, including Omar Abakr Idriss and Nour Eldeen Sinin Idriss, the principal of Abu Zereiga primary school. The witnesses also verified that the governmental military force handed the seventeen abducted people to the local militias who tied their hands behind their backs and divided them into three groups before shooting them in the heads. The militias then formed a military box over them to prevent anyone from taking the bodies. This has now been there for a week and no one has been able to come close for fear of being shot.
• Army excesses reported in West Darfur (Mornei, Cara, August 25) Four (4) armed men on horsebacks, wearing military uniforms looted 100 sheep from Mornei in West Darfur on Wednesday, a witness told Radio Dabanga. The witness, who did not wish to be named fearing retribution from Sudanese authorities on the ground, told Radio Dabanga, "The gunmen found a herd of sheep with a shepherd in Mornei. The gunmen opened fire in the air and the shepherd left the area. He lost control over the sheep after which the men belonging to the armed forces took the sheep to unknown location." The witness added that a report about the incident had been filed with the Mornei police. However, no action has yet been taken in this regard. A sheep in Sudan costs approximately 200-300 pounds.
• Student shot dead in Zalingei market (Zalingei, October 26) Victim’s relatives believe she was targeted deliberately The student Ikhles Yaqub Adam was shot dead by members of the Sudanese Security Services in Zalingei’s main market on Tuesday. Witnesses told Radio Dabanga that the victim, a 3rd-year student at Zalingei University, was shopping with some friends when she was struck by the bullet. According to the security forces, the incident happened by accident as they were chasing after someone else; they opened fire in order to catch that other person and hit Ms. Adam unwillingly. Two bystanders were also wounded in the shooting. The victim’s friends and colleagues however indicated they don’t believe the security service’s explanation, stating that Ikhles had probably been deliberately targeted due to her being a member of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-Abdel Wahid).
• Civilian shot dead in Saraf Omra (August 24) A civilian was shot dead by a member of the local militia in Saraf Omra, North Darfur on Tuesday. A relative of the deceased, Abdul Aziz Abkar Abdullah, told Radio Dabanga that the incident had happened when Abdul Aziz was headed back to his village after shopping in the city with other villagers. As they wanted to cross the city’s checkpoint, located on the outskirts, the militia guarding it asked the group to pay two pounds per person to be granted access out of Saraf Omra. Abdul Aziz refused and was shot twice; one bullet hit his head, the other one his chest, which led to his immediate death.
• Burning of villages, families flee (EL FASHER, May 17) Close to one hundred families fled from the area west of Shangil Tobaya and East Jebel Marra to the valleys and mountains, seeking refuge after local militias backed by government forces raided their villages. A witness told Radio Dabanga that the forces centered in Shangil Tobaya moved with more than 20 cars backed by local militias on camel and horse backs and burnt down the villages of Abu Mara, Jurab Elray, Asilowa, Karko and Linda on Sunday. The witness also stated that most of those families headed towards Zamzam camp near El Fasher yesterday morning.
• Two injured in Abu Tira firing (EL FASHER, October 23) One of them, a watermelon trader, rushed to Khartoum hospital due to his critical state Two refugees from North Darfur’s Zamzam camps were seriously injured on Friday when central reserve police, also known as Abu Tira, officers opened fire at them. A witness to the incident told Radio Dabanga that it occurred in the watermelon market of Zamzam camp on Friday afternoon. "Three Abu Tira officers came to the market with watermelons at 6.30 pm and one of them opened fired in the market without any warning or reason," the witness said. One of those injured was 28-year-old Issa Mohammed Ahmed, a watermelon trader and another was 18-year-old refugee Hamada Osman Ibrahim.
"The Abu Tira forces pose a serious security threat to the refugees in the camp. The shooting was probably part of a covert plan meant to shut down the watermelon market in Zamzam camp," he added.
[4] Attacks on fields and agricultural lands by Arab militia forces
The phenomenon of land expropriation has defined conflict and genocide in Darfur from the very beginning. This is largely because the Khartoum regime "paid" its Janjaweed militia forces with the land of the typically sedentary African farmers of the region. Such expropriation and violent seizures have created an intolerable security situation: those with legitimate claims to their lands are typically threatened with violence by Khartoum’s militia allies, some from other countries (e.g., Chad and Niger).
Again, these seizures occur without fear of prosecution; indeed, they are often made by forces that are part of official regime military and militia forces:
• Armed militias seize farms near Garsila, West Darfur (Garsila, July 19) Radio Dabanga was informed by a female refugee that displaced women from Garsila, West Darfur, are currently complaining about armed militias who apparently seized their farms, thus preventing their cultivation. The witness indicated that a group of the militia went to the Gedo, Gallinja and Gang Kosi areas, where several shepherds bring their herds, to take their land and set up their own farms with the Government’s support.
•Farmers complain of herders’ invasion (EL FASHER, November 11) Say they have started letting cattle graze on fields before the agreed deadline Farmers across all Darfur states complained to Radio Dabanga on Friday about their farms being invaded by herders. Radio Dabanga spoke to farmers from Kutum and Kabkabiya in North Darfur; Garsila, For Baranga and Mornei in West Darfur as well as Marshinj, El Malam and Shareiya in South Darfur. Farmers expressed their anxiety over the herders releasing their cattle on the farms before the agreed upon deadline. ’No response from authorities’ Farmers from Kabkabiya told Radio Dabanga, "Despite lodging a number of complaints to the local authorities and appealing to the sheikhs of the herders, we have not received any positive response. Threats and abuses against us by herders have increased."
• West Darfur land settled by people from Niger, Chad, Central African (el-Geneina, June 22) Displaced people in camps in El Geneina, West Darfur, revealed that around one hundred thousand square feet of their lands has been occupied by new inhabitants from Niger, Chad and Central Africa. A sheikh from Mornei camp told Radio Dabanga that the occupied land included the areas of Masteri, Beida, Dowany, Kokoriya, Jory, Gubeya, Jeing, Mornei and many other areas. He also stated that the new inhabitants have started changing the names of the area, cutting down large trees, demolishing graves and farming on it in attempts to erase the former symbols of the areas.
• Herders damaging crops in South Darfur (GEREIDA, August 19) Farmers complain that they are being forced to abandon their fields. Farmers in north-west of Gereida in South Darfur complained on Friday of shepherds leading their livestock onto their farms and thereby damaging their bean and corn crops. One of the farmers, told Radio Dabanga that entire villages in north and west Gereida were occupied by shepherds, who forced the farmers to abandon their crops. He added that farmers in other surrounding areas were facing the same fate. There are allegedly about 200 to 300 shepherds set up in and around the area whose activities have led to farmers leaving in despair. "We would like to appeal to the local authorities or order the pastoralists to leave the region. Nomadic people must go away from our farms here," the farmer told Radio Dabanga.
• Foreign settlers claim lands in Kebkabiya area (KEBKABIYA, April 19) Citizens of Ghara Zawiya village near Kabkabiya in North Darfur said that 1000 new settlers coming from neighboring countries entered 12 of the villages in the area and have occupied them. They have taken over the farmland and ordered the original inhabitants to stay far from their lands. A citizen of Ghara Zawiya told Radio Dabanga that the new inhabitants came overland on camels and Large Land Cruiser which had machine guns fixed on them, besides many different types of weapons, despite the area having military protection. He pointed out that the inhabitants have settled in the villages of Um Jaras, Karikar, Hashaba, Um Duldi, Um Siyala, Taradona, East Taradona, Um Hatab, Um Rawaba Adhan Barid and Owen Rado. The citizen added that the original land owners have formed a committee to meet the commissioner of Kabkabiya. For his part, the commissioner of Kabkabiya, Dr. Adam Mohammed Adam, denied the entrance of new inhabitants into the borders of his county.
[5] The role of the Abu Tira
One of the constant features in recent dispatches from Radio Dabanga is the role of the Central Reserve Police, typically referred to as Abu Tira. These forces---almost entirely Arab and drawn from the ranks of the Janjaweed, the Popular Defense Forces, and other paramilitary groups---have been allowed by Khartoum, almost certainly by design, to create a constant state of insecurity and a threat of violence that is debilitating to both the displaced and settled populations of Darfur.
Much of the Abu Tira force has been moved to South Kordofan, where governor Ahmed Haroun again directs them (it was under Haroun, indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, that the Abu Tira committed many of their predations in Darfur).
The pervasive nature of Abu Tira violence in Darfur is suggested by these accounts from Radio Dabanga, as well as by a number of the accounts above:
• Abu Tira personnel targeting women (Sirba [West Darfur], September 20) Those resisting the central reserve forces are subject to threats and death Residents of refugee camps in West Darfur’s Sirba locality complained on Tuesday about repeated threats and attacks targeted women by the Central Reserve Forces, also known as Abu Tira. The Abu Tira were also accused of killing camp residents and damaging property in Al Jabal, Arkum, Sengir Fud and Agri refugee camps. A leading activist in the camp told Radio Dabanga, "Elements of the Abu Tira stationed near the camp have consistently come up at night and almost repeatedly kidnapped women and girls at gunpoint. The last two incidents were over the weekend." The camp resident said that a refugee was killed on Saturday after being shot dead by Abu Tira personnel for having tried to stop them from taking his daughter by force. The second such incident was reported on Sunday. A sheikh in the camp reportedly caught the Abu Tira personnel while he was raping a women and took him to the camp commander. However, there was no action taken by the camp commander and the Abu Tira personnel returned to the camps to issue threats to the refugees.
• Mershing IDPs: militia murdering at will (May 16) The displaced people from Mershing Camp protested Friday against impunity of the Central Reserve Forces, known locally as ’Abu Tira’. The refugees say the militia are not investigated or prosecuted despite killing operations and threats practiced by them against the displaced of the area. The displaced people revealed that 4 people have been killed by the Abu Tira forces during the month and, through Radio Dabanga, demanded the UN and international community to take immediate procedures to offer them protection or transport them to a safe place.
• Abu Tira forces loot refugees (EL FASHER, November 4) A group of central reserve police, better known as Abu Tira, personnel looted refugees near North Darfur’s Zamzam camp on Thursday, sources told Radio Dabanga. Abu Tira officers allegedly stole mobile phones and goods purchased by the refugees at the market in Zamzam. Refugees were shopping in preparation for Sunday’s Eid al-Adha festival. A witness from the camp told Radio Dabanga, "Abu Tira forces stopped and arrested large numbers of people in the middle of the street when they were returning home from shopping in the market." He added that the forces then took over expensive purchases made by refugees as well as their mobile phones. "A vehicle with Abu Tira personnel drove in and took all their belongings," the witness said.
• Difficult conditions in Darfur camps (Tawila, September 6) Abu Tirat excesses in Rwanda [There] has been an increase in firing carried out by the Central Reserve Forces, or Abu Tirat as they are commonly known, in North Darfur’s Rwanda camp in Tawila locality. A leader of the displaced persons told Radio Dabanga, "Abu Tirat men open fire at the camp from their headquarters, using heavy artillery and RPGs. This is accompanied by cheering from large crowds of the Abu Tirat forces located on the ground. All of this is adding to an atmosphere of fear and panic among the camp population." While claiming that gunfire continued during the day on Monday and Tuesday, the camp leader explained that a constant fear of attack is adding anxiety to the lives of the refugees in the camp. He appealed to Abu Tirat forces to put an end to such horror that causes panic. He also appealed to the UNAMID forces to intervene in order to protect them from the attacks.
[UNAMID has a base in Tawila, location of Rwanda Camp.]
• [Abu Tira in El Fasher’s al-Salaam Camp] (EL FAHSER, October 5) Refugees complain of firing and looting in the camp on a daily basis. They say, complaining about excesses committed by Abu Tira forces to the United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) bears no results. "The UNAMID asks us to go to the police to lodge complaints. But complaining to the police is of no use because they aren’t going to do anything about the Abu Tira excesses," a civilian told Radio Dabanga. He stressed that the UNAMID’s mandate was to protect civilians, and that it should carry out its responsibility. He also demanded that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should intervene in the proceedings for the benefit of the refugees.
The Abu Tira have also been responsible for attacks on Arab groups:
• Abu Tira militia involved in ’massacre’ in Darfur’s far south (BURAM, June 26) A story of a fresh massacre has come out from a remote area in the far south of Darfur. Members of the government’s Central Reserve Force involved in a spate of tribal fighting in the area are accused by a tribal leader of attacking a group of Habbaniya tribesman, killing 23. One of the leaders of the Habbaniya said that recent news reports on the recent events in Buram District incorrectly blamed the killings on the Salamat tribe, when in fact it was the Central Reserve Force who carried out the attack. This militia, known locally as ’Abu Tira’, used eight cars to launch an attack on the Habbaniya group, gunning them down. According to the tribal leader, who narrated the course of these events over the shortwave broadcaster Radio Dabanga, his story is based on accounts of witnesses. He affirmed that they have full evidence to show the massacre was committed by the Central Reserve Police.
[6] Aerial attacks on civilians and humanitarians
Aerial military attacks on civilians have been a constant source of civilian terror and displacement for more than eight years. I have recently concluded a lengthy analysis of these attacks, and those in South Sudan, going back to 1999, when systematic data collection began (a data spreadsheet accompanies the report at www.sudanbombing.org, as do two updates of the original May 6, 2011 report and spreadsheet). There has been a lull in bombing attacks in recent months, as Khartoum has focused its aerial military assets to attacks on Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and South Sudan. But as with major fighting between combatants in Darfur, there have been lulls before; and inevitably they have been followed by renewed bombing.
Since 2003 there have been more than 700 confirmed bombing attacks on civilians in Darfur. Casualties from these attacks, including attacks by helicopter gunships at point-blank range, are in thousands; but it is displacement that has been overwhelming source of mortality resulting from aerial attacks. All the attacks confirmed in my report---almost certainly only a small fraction of actual attacks---constitute war crimes, given their indiscriminate nature or their deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian resources, including water sources, livestock, and agricultural production. In aggregate, as with the massive number of ethnically-targeted rapes that are clearly part of a larger strategy, these aerial attacks reach the threshold of crimes against humanity, as established by the Rome Statute (7.1.k).
And though there has been a diminishment of bombing attacks, they have not ceased. Radio Dabanga reports (November 20):
• Sudan Armed Forces bombs North Darfur (EL FASHER, November 20) The Sudanese Air Force (SAF) launched indiscriminate aerial attacks on Dahashim, Beer Dik, Shegig Karo, Donki Hosh and Amarai areas of North Darfur on Friday and Saturday, sources [in] the field told Radio Dabanga. Leader of the opposition Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) Suleiman Sandal Haggar told Radio Dabanga that the SAF used MiG and Antonov aircrafts for the bombing, which led to the deaths of 53 camels and 217 sheep. "The attacks took place at 11 in the morning and four in the evening. That’s when people had gathered for the daily market," Suleiman said. Suleiman requested the international community to embrace a previously passed United Nations Security Council resolution on Darfur which imposes an air embargo. "Civilians need protection from the Sudanese Air Force. They are being targeted because of their vicinity to the water resources," he said.
Of the potential destructiveness of such bombing, a single incident from this past April stands as amply revealing:
• 18 women and 9 children killed in air strike in Jebel Marra, Darfur (JEBEL MARRA, April 28) Twenty-seven people were killed, including 18 women and 9 children, when an Antonov plane dropped several bombs on the areas of Koloberi and Gurlengbang in the southern part of the Jebel Marra region. Six women were also injured in the air attack. A witness told Radio Dabanga that the airstrikes led to the burning of 27 houses and also the death of sheep and cattle. He stated that the bombed areas had been free of any rebel presence. Radio Dabanga could not contact the army for comments.

 

 

Acquiescence Before Mass Human Destructionin Sudan’s Border Regions”

Posted by: Eric Reeves on Monday, October 24, 2011 - 02:28 PM
Briefs & Advocacy: Post-Machakos '11

“Acquiescence Before Mass Human Destruction in Sudan’s Border Regions”
Blue Nile and South Kordofan face catastrophic humanitarian crises
http://www.sudanreeves.org/2011/10/24/acquiescence-before-mass-human-destruction-in-sudans-border-regions/
Following Khartoum’s military assaults on South Kordofan (June 5) and Blue Nile (September 1), hundreds of thousands of civilians now face relentless aerial attacks, violent displacement, and starvation as the harvests are poised for failure. For Khartoum is denying all humanitarian access to these acutely vulnerable populations. There are no indications the international community is prepared to change the regime’s ruthless military calculations, which are rapidly leading to catastrophe.
Eric Reeves
October 24, 2011
For two months now the world has watched as the brutal regime in Khartoum continues to deny all relief access to large populations of acutely vulnerable civilians in Blue Nile State, which lies immediately north of the border dividing what are now North and South Sudan.  The same embargo, extending even to independent humanitarian assessment missions, has been in place in neighboring South Kordofan State for five months.  This scandalous fact bears repeating, since it has been so poorly reported: the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum has barred all international relief organizations from responding to what substantial evidence makes clear are major humanitarian crises in Blue Nile and South Kordofan—and both crises are on the verge of becoming overwhelming catastrophes, involving many hundreds of thousands of civilians.
There is an eerie familiarity to all this, for what we are seeing is an accelerated reprise of Khartoum’s strategy of obstructing relief efforts in Darfur, a strategy the regime committed to aggressively once it recognized its “error” in allowing an international humanitarian presence in Darfur.  Regime officials now repeatedly make clear that they won’t allow “another Darfur” to emerge in either South Kordofan or Blue Nile—there won’t be any witnesses to the massive suffering and destruction that are well underway. And of course, in addition to banning all relief efforts, the regime allows no journalists or human rights monitors into either of these states.
We should remember that this regime has a decades-long history of obstructing humanitarian aid in Sudan, including the total embargo on relief efforts imposed by Khartoum on the Nuba Mountains throughout the 1990s—part of a jihad that is widely acknowledged to have been genocidal in ambition.  Throughout the bloody civil war, which claimed well over 2 million lives in the South and border states—mainly from disease and malnutrition related to violence—Khartoum frequently cut off all humanitarian aid to the South for long periods of time.  Because virtually all of Sudan was and remains inaccessible except by air—there are almost no roads, and in the long rainy season these are mainly impassible—airlift capacity and access are what’s critical.  So all that Khartoum had to do to shut down humanitarian relief was deny air access to the large international humanitarian organizations based in Lokichokio, northern Kenya. In early July 2002, for example, the UN estimate for those being denied humanitarian assistance in the South was 1.7 million human beings.
So how has the U.S. responded to this most recent chapter in the regime’s deployment of its crude “weapon of mass destruction”?  Officials of the Obama administration continue to go through the motions of demanding humanitarian access as well as an independent investigation of the well-documented, large-scale atrocity crimes in Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan; but it does so without either conviction or determination (the U.S. special envoy for Sudan, Princeton Lyman, first called for such a independent human rights investigation over two months ago, and can point to no progress whatsoever).  There is very strong evidence that similar atrocity crimes are being committed in Blue Nile, certainly in the form of continuous, indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilians throughout much of the state (see my October 15 update to an analysis of such attacks over the past twelve years, at www.sudanbombing.org).  And yet condemnation by the U.S. has been tepid at best.
Instead, the U.S., the UN, and other international actors of consequence have for months indulged in offering muted condemnations and making facile “demands” with no expectation of compliance.  Since Khartoum’s military invasion of Abyei more than five months ago (May 20), the regime has not budged an inch from any of its categorical refusals.  It will not withdraw militarily from Abyei, as it has promised; it will not engage in any discussions of access for humanitarians or human rights investigators; and it will not negotiate a political settlement to the conflict in South Kordofan, as it committed to doing in late June.  The only change of note is that the propaganda organs of the regime have dramatically increased their activities and are now offering hideously distorting accounts of civilian life in the two states, and at the same time boasting that “regional and international changes [are] working in Sudan’s favour.”
As I argued in August, shortly before Khartoum’s military assault on Blue Nile, the international community and the UN in particular were setting themselves up for failure by demanding what would clearly not be granted, or even supported in the Security Council.  The UN High Commission for Human Rights had declared very publicly that there should be in South Kordofan an “independent, thorough, and objective inquiry with the aim of holding perpetrators to account.”  But it was obvious then and now that Khartoum would never accede to this demand; and it was equally clear that a Security Council resolution authorizing any form of non-consensual investigation—even for ethnically-targeted mass executions—would never survive China’s (or Russia’s) veto.  The failure I spoke of is now conspicuous: despite the demand for an independent UN human rights investigation, no serious effort was ever made by the U.S. or any other member of the Security Council to seek authorization for such an investigation.  And yet in characteristic fashion this failure has been passed over without remark or self-criticism.  The evident thinking is that if the diplomatic mumbling continues long enough, then no definitive failure will be registered.
No matter that following Khartoum’s invasion of Abyei, a UN human rights team found strong evidence of actions “tantamount to ethnic cleansing” (the UN Secretariat would later disingenuously weaken this report); no matter that the military assault on South Kordofan began shortly thereafter, and we have received since June overwhelming evidence of widespread, ethnically-targeted civilian destruction, including extraordinarily revealing satellite photographs of mass gravesites; no matter that we have numerous eyewitness accounts of house-to-house searches and roadblocks targeting the African tribal grouping known as the Nuba. But there can be no doubt about the authority of a confidential UN human rights report, prepared by UN investigators who were on the ground for several weeks in June as part of the UN peacekeeping mission stationed in Kadugli.  Their report was promptly leaked and its central conclusion made clear the urgency of a human rights investigation:
“Instead of distinguishing between civilians and combatants and accordingly directing their military operations only against military targets, the Sudan Armed Forces and allied paramilitary forces have targeted members and supporters of the SPLM/A, most of whom are Nubans and other dark skinned people.”
Arab militias have been widely reported to be doing much of the fighting for Khartoum, both in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.  On October 22, SPLM-N Secretary General Yasir Arman asserted that Khartoum was in fact deploying mercenaries:
“The National Congress Party military has been, of late, actively engaged in recruiting Janjaweed militias—mostly non-Sudanese—from North and West Africa, particularly Niger.  The airports of Al-Geneina and Nyala, Darfur, recently witnessed a flurry of flights transporting mercenaries to Damazin.” (Press Release, Office of the Secretary General of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, October 22, 2011)
The large-scale use of mercenaries would mark a new stage in the Khartoum regime’s ruthless survivalism, and yet another crushing military expense for a budget and economy that are already in a shambles.
Obama administration skepticism
That an attack on South Kordofan was imminent was clear in the first days of June, primarily from evidence of a rapidly accelerating movement of men, arms and armor toward South Kordofan from the main forward military base at el-Obeid and other northern bases.  Soon after the invasion, Satellite Sentinel Project photography revealed unambiguously that there were mass gravesites in and around Kadugli.  The policy of the Obama administration in the face of such massive evidence, supported by numerous eyewitness accounts from the ground, was at once dismissive and skeptical; this peculiar skepticism extended even to a highly tendentious claim that the administration possessed (unspecified) intelligence that called into question the validity of the Satellite Sentinel Project findings.  That skepticism, particularly on the part special envoy Lyman, has had the effect—presumably designed—of diminishing the urgency of the crises in the region.  Lyman’s comments during an interview of June 28 (just as the UN human rights investigators were completing their powerfully damning report) suggest an almost casual concern for the unmistakable commission of atrocity crimes, and a specious moral equivalence as well:
“Because we don’t have a presence there [in South Kordofan], we haven’t been able to investigate [the many reports of atrocity crimes] fully. There are certainly reports of targeted killings. There are some reports from the other side also. What we’ve asked for is a full investigation.”
And to the follow-up question (“By whom [should the investigation be conducted]?”) Lyman responded baldly:
“Well, by the UN would be the best. The UN presence has not been sufficient to get out and stop this or to investigate it.”
Given this facile, finally disingenuous answer—Lyman certainly knew that no such UN investigation would be authorized—we must inevitably wonder about motives.  Why these perfunctory answers to such pressing questions?  What lay behind the contrived skepticism about findings from the Satellite Sentinel Project?
I have argued at length that there are strong indications, past and present, that U.S. policy toward Sudan is and has been unduly influenced by a lust for counter-terrorism intelligence from Khartoum’s ruthless security services, something reported in chillingly compelling fashion by the Los Angeles Times (June 17, 2005) and the Washington Post (August 30, 2010).  The larger point here was made emphatically by former Senator Russ Feingold, who spoke with unrivalled authority, sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee and chairing the Africa subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
“I take serious issue with the way the report [on international terrorism by the U.S. State Department] overstates the level of cooperation in our counterterrorism relationship with Sudan, a nation which the U.S. classifies as a state sponsor of terrorism. A more accurate assessment is important not only for effectively countering terrorism in the region, but as part of a review of our overall policy toward Sudan, including U.S. pressure to address the ongoing crisis in Darfur and maintain the fragile peace between the North and the South.” (Statement by Senator Russell Feingold, Chair of the Africa Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, May 1, 2009)
No other Senator joined former Senator Feingold in demanding that there be a response to this serious concern.  As a consequence, the Obama administration has felt no serious Congressional pressure to acknowledge either the authority or significance of Feingold’s damning assertions.

But of course none of this matters to those who are already victims of a regime that sees the U.S. as obsessed with the prize of Khartoum-generated counter-terrorism intelligence.  None of this matters to people who are uprooted, unprotected, and without humanitarian resources.  Precisely because the regime allows no journalists, human rights monitors, or humanitarians into these highly threatened areas, we are left only with only broadly informed estimates, or evidence that is based on news accounts or accounts that come anecdotally from embedded or fleeing Sudanese civilians.  But there are a number of credible estimates and a great deal of such reportage, some from intrepid journalists who have made it to the Kauda area of the Nuba Mountains and to Kurmuk, which is the southern Blue Nile stronghold of the northern indigenous rebel force (formerly allied with the rebel movement that secured Southern independence): the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLA/M-N).  There are even a few courageous humanitarians who have refused to withdraw from these regions, and have reported in excruciating detail on what they have seen.
Consequences of inaction
The possibility and immense danger of a military response by Khartoum in South Kordofan and Blue Nile had been conspicuous for quite some time before the assaults actually occurred, as had the invasion of Abyei.  And yet no international actor of consequence spoke out in meaningful fashion; here the U.S. has plenty of company in failing miserably to anticipate the present violence, and the entirely predictable humanitarian crises that have come in its wake.  Khartoum was not warned seriously against initiating the clearly impending assaults on South Kordofan (June 5) and Blue Nile (September 1); rather, the regime took its cue from the muted diplomacy of perfunctory exhortations and glib “expectations.” Following the brutal military seizure of the disputed Abyei region (May 20), the regime in Khartoum understood there was no serious commitment to halt their military endeavors.  The Obama administration, as represented by special envoy Lyman, seemed clearly willing to let Khartoum have its way in the North, so long as some terms of the CPA continue to be observed as South Sudan struggled into nationhood.
Just as a senior administration official declared that genocide in Darfur had been “de-coupled” from the key issue in bilateral relations between Khartoum and Washington (i.e., Khartoum’s continuing presence on the U.S. State Department list of terrorism-sponsoring nations), so atrocity crimes and even extermination in northern states, on whatever scale, are apparently insufficient to compel any robust U.S. response or change in policy.  Given such decisions, to pretend that we don’t really know what is going on, as Lyman has repeatedly tried to do, is a nasty bit of political expediency.
Dispatches with datelines in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile have come from a wide range of news organizations.  UN investigators, part of the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMIS) with a base in Kadugli, produced their searing human rights report in late June/early July, and it included the following:
“Instead of distinguishing between civilians and combatants and accordingly directing their military operations only against military targets, the Sudan Armed Forces and allied paramilitary forces have targeted members and supporters of the SPLM/A, most of whom are Nubans and other dark skinned people.”
“[This campaign included] aerial bombardments resulting in destruction of property, forced displacement, significant loss of civilian lives, including of women, children and the elderly; abductions; house-to-house searches; arbitrary arrests and detentions; targeted killings; summary executions; reports of mass graves; systematic destruction of dwellings and attacks on churches.”
“With the reinforcement of Sudan Armed Forces, Central Reserve Police and militia elements, the security situation deteriorated on 7 June, with indiscriminate shelling of Kadugli town apparently targeting densely civilian-inhabited areas.”
“On 22 June, an UNMIS independent contractor reported witnessing SAF elements fill a mass grave in Al Gardut Locality in Tillo with dead bodies. She reported that SAF elements transported the bodies to the site, dumped them in the grave and using a bulldozer to cover the grave. On 10 June, UNMIS Human Rights interviewed residents from Murta village, outside of Kadugli Town, who stated that they saw fresh mass graves located in a valley southeast of the Murta bus station near the Kadugli police training centre.”
And UNMIS was not the only source for reports of egregious violations of human rights. Many Nuba have reported bombing attacks on civilians since June 5, as well mass slaughter and assaults on humanitarian operations and workers.  Julie Flint in The Observer (UK) (July 17, 2011) draws on many years of experience and unimpeachable sources in reporting that:
“National staff of international aid organisations have also come under attack. UNMIS cites the case of a young Nuba woman arrested and accused of supporting the SPLM. UNMIS human rights officers saw bruises and scars on her body consistent with her claim to have been beaten with fists, sticks, rubber hoses and electric wires.”
“Underscoring the need for the ‘independent and comprehensive investigation’ UNMIS recommends, the Observer has been told—by a hitherto impeccable source not connected to the SPLM/A—that 410 captured SPLM sympathisers were ordered executed on 10 June by Major-General Ahmad Khamis, one of four senior army officers sent to South Kordofan from Khartoum at the start of the war …. ”
These are the reports, along with unambiguous satellite imagery from the Satellite Sentinel Project, about which Lyman has continued to express skepticism.  Also ignored were dispatches from a number of journalists who made it to Kauda in July, in the center of the Nuba Mountains.  There they reported—often with accompanying photography—on the horrific human toll taken by relentless aerial attacks on civilian targets.  At a crucial time in the agricultural cycle, when the planting and tending of crops was critical, there was instead massive displacement.  The people of the Nuba are facing starvation in the near term.
And from Blue Nile we also have many dispatches with a Kurmuk dateline (the town actually straddles the Sudan/Ethiopia border), reporting again on relentless aerial attacks directed against civilian targets (again, see my October 15 update to the history of this long-term military practice, at www.sudanbombing.org ).  Within days of the September 1 assault, the African Center for Justice and Peace Studies (UK), with excellent sources throughout Sudan, was reporting that, “On 3 September, aircraft continued to bomb SPLM areas. The main water reservoir in Al Damazein was destroyed in the bombardment, possibly in a deliberate attempt to deprive the population of this essential resource. About 75 bodies have been confirmed to be present in the Al Damazein morgue. The hospital has declared an emergency.”
The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks (October 17, dateline: Kurmuk) makes clear the relationship between the lack of food and aerial bombardment by Antonovs:
“Khidir Abusita, the chief of Maiyas village, in Sudan’s crisis-hit Blue Nile state, points to a bomb and the shrapnel that ripped through two ‘tukuls’ (conical mud and thatch huts) on 2 October. That day, the Sudan Armed Forces’ Antonov bomber planes literally broke apart two families and left the village terrorized by their almost daily appearance. Abusita spoke to IRIN about the damage caused to his village: ‘The Antonov came here at around midday [on 2 October]; it bombed the place, killing six people, including one child. Among the people who died were two pregnant women.’”
“In one of the affected families, three people died and three are remaining, so we took these three behind the mountain to hide. In this other family, two died and three are remaining.  ‘Another man who was just passing by to visit his neighbours was killed too. They were just farmers. His leg was cut and we tried to take him to hospital but he died.’  ‘The other injured man is lying at Kurmuk hospital after the [bomb] cut his feet and stomach.’  ‘Yesterday [1 October] there were two Antonovs around the area. They just circled overhead for one hour, so we are very scared.’  ‘Most of the people have stayed here, but behind the mountains. We sleep near the river during the day and come back to the village at night.’  ‘We just eat from these small, small farms; we just [grow food] near our houses because this year we haven’t been able to go to our farms in the valley to cultivate.’” (emphasis added)
“We don’t have sugar, we don’t have tea, we don’t have coffee. Also there is no medicine, people are just depending on the traditional medicine.  ‘There are 3,475 people in the village and no one has enough food. We don’t know what to do,’ [said chief Abusita].”
Towards the end of September the UN declared that it was urgent to get food to the people of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, even as estimates of numbers of displaced persons and food needs was already inadequate to the realities of human need now apparent.  Malik Agar, the elected governor of Blue Nile—and deposed by Khartoum—has estimated that half Blue Nile’s population of 1.2 million is “on the move.”  And they are on the move at a time that should be given over entirely to harvesting crops planted during the past rainy season.  There is no way to verify Malik’s estimate, but it would be foolish to ignore the clear indications that hundreds of thousands of people are now displaced.  More than 30,000 have already fled to Ethiopia; many others to neighboring Sennar State.  As in South Kordofan, the very rough humanitarian assessments of food availability suggest that massive human starvation may be imminent if access is not granted by the regime. Valerie Amos, the head of UN humanitarian operations—and who in mid-July early declared that “we do not know whether these is any truth to the grave allegations of human rights abuses” in South Kordofan—found herself obliged to declare (August 30) that:
“[M]ore than 200,000 people affected by the fighting in South Kordofan faced ‘potentially catastrophic levels of malnutrition and mortality’ because of Khartoum denying access to aid agencies. Also this week, two leading human rights groups said that deadly air raids on civilians in rebel-held areas of the Nuba Mountains may amount to war crimes.”
More recently the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) put the matter more bluntly, if still almost certainly understating, significantly, the scale of human need:
“The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has also launched a $3.5-million appeal to help 235,000 people on the brink of starvation in Sudan’s embattled southern border region, because of fighting in Blue Nile and South Kordofan.” (emphasis added)
The FAO has also indicated in its October 5 news release that the forecast for food security is exceedingly grim, and that “next month’s harvest is expected to generally fail.” (emphasis added)
“Next month’s harvest is expected to generally fail … ” —and there is no international humanitarian presence or access.
What will it take to stop the continuing slide toward catastrophe in South Kordofan and Blue Nile?  And what about Darfur, which is no longer mentioned by the U.S. and the Europeans except parenthetically?  To make matters worse, both the UN and the African Union are, for different reasons, committed to a representation of Darfur that minimizes ongoing suffering and destruction, and highlights an essentially meaningless (and potentially counter-productive) agreement that finally emerged in July from the bumbling and increasingly politicized Doha (Qatar) peace talks.
Certainly much was revealed about the future of marginalized regions in northern Sudan with the breakdown of the important framework agreement signed on June 28 by Malik Agar, representing the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement-North, and by presidential advisor Nafi’e Ali Nafi’e of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime.  The agreement committed the signatories to seek a political resolution of the conflict and to begin immediate negotiations for a cease-fire.  But the agreement was promptly disowned by President al-Bashir on his return from China (July 1, 2011).  More than disowning the agreement, al-Bashir declared at Friday prayers:
“‘[Al-Bashir] directed the armed forces to continue their military operations in South Kordofan until a cleansing of the region is over,’ SUNA quoted Bashir as telling worshippers during Friday prayers.” (emphasis added)
In al-Bashir’s abrupt reneging we saw for the first time the full power of the generals who now dominate the political and security cabal that rules in Khartoum.  These military figures, several of them senior cabinet officials, have slowly moved Sudan into what one well-informed source in Khartoum calls the “hour of the soldiers.”  In short, there has been a “creeping military coup,” and some of the generals who are now so powerful appear on a range of lists assembled by UN and other bodies for the prosecution of atrocity crimes by the International Criminal Court (Abdel Rahmin Mohamed Hussein, the current Defense Minister and former Minister of the Interior, is one of 17 named on a confidential annex to a report by the former UN Panel of Experts on Darfur; February 2006). They know their future depends on surviving at all costs, or they will spend the rest of their lives in The Hague.
But there is no apparent recognition of this new political reality in Khartoum by the Obama administration, and special envoy Lyman simply repeats his glib assessment: “there is no military solution to the conflict,” and all the U.S. can do is “promote negotiations.”  But it is precisely a military solution to its “new southern problem” that Khartoum is seeking, as al-Bashir’s comments make perfectly clear.  And as for negotiations, the regime is equally blunt: “Sudan will never again negotiate ‘under UN supervision’”:
“‘There will be no negotiation with the SPLM-N because it was the one that started the war’ [President al-Bashir] said, adding that ending the state of war in the two states is contingent on the SPLM-N’s acceptance of the elections results in South Kordofan and surrendering its arms to the Sudanese army. ‘There are no more negotiations or protocols, this is our position,’ Al-Bashir declared.” (“Bashir takes pride in Sudan’s defiance of UN resolutions,” Sudan Tribune, October 13, 2011)
Lyman has made no comment on such intransigence by one of the “negotiating” partners he would have us believe can be accommodated diplomatically.  And he no longer pushes for the independent, UN-led human rights investigation he thought worth proposing in June; now there is a hideously belated focus on humanitarian access, as the desperate plight of many hundreds of thousands of civilians no longer permits any skepticism:
“United Special envoy to Sudan Princeton Lyman urged Khartoum to allow ‘credible’ international organizations to reach the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile in order to assess the humanitarian situation.”
But this plea will be met with the same aggressiveness and truculent defiance that has increasingly become the hallmark of the Khartoum regime.  And having pleaded so feebly previously, there is precious little reason to believe that Lyman’s voice will carry any weight now.
It is happening, before our very eyes, if we would only see.  Yes, of course there is much that we don’t know; but there is too much that we do know for any further delay to be justified: even exceedingly conservative UN estimates for displacement and humanitarian need are more than enough.  And do we have any doubt about the authenticity of these narratives from Kurmuk?  or the significance of deliberate, continuous aerial attacks on civilians and agricultural livelihoods?
“In another hospital bed, 65-year-old Altom Osman is recovering from a deep shrapnel wound in his back and one in his arm after a bomb hit the village of Sali an hour north of Kurmuk. ‘I was taking some sorghum flour to my wife. We were passing our farm and then the Antonov came immediately and bombed,’ Osman whispered. Two hours further north, in Maiyas, village chief Khidir Abusita points to a hole a bomb from an Antonov made that he said killed six people, including 55-year-old Hakuma Yousif and her 20-year-old daughter Soura in their hut. ‘Yesterday there were two Antonovs and they were circling for an hour. We are very scared…’” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Kurmuk], October 17, 2011)
“[Following Southern] independence in July this year, Maza Soya led her nine children out of a squalid camp in Ethiopia dreaming of a new life back home in Sudan. Last month, however, fighting erupted in Blue Nile state between the northern Sudanese army and fighters allied to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the dominant force in the newly independent South Sudan. ‘Our homes were burnt down to the ground. There were daily air raids on our town,’ Soya told Reuters two weeks after fleeing back to Ethiopia’s frontier town of Kurmuk.” (Reuters [dateline: Kurmuk], October 14, 2011)
“Satdam Anima’s eyes flicker and weep as the doctor sews up the stump of his left arm, before he rolls back on the hospital bed, one of the latest victims in Sudan’s relentless bombing campaign in Blue Nile state. Dr Evan Atar says he has done seven amputations since war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and fighters loyal to the SPLM-North in Blue Nile state last month. He has treated more than 600 others for shrapnel wounds. ‘We are really now running out of supplies. We have been running here and there and crying… But now where to get it from is really an issue,’ he said.”
“President Omar al-Bashir has blocked foreign aid agencies from entering Blue Nile and nearby South Kordofan state, where a separate conflict between the army and SPLM-North rebels has raged since June. Kurmuk’s is the only hospital between neighbouring Ethiopia and Damazin, the state capital of Blue Nile, which remains under SAF control, and Dr Atar is the only doctor. He says the hospital will run out of vital supplies such as saline solution, cotton and gauze this week if no aid arrives, after using up six months’ supplies in one.”
“A man on the operating table cries out in pain, but Atar says the hospital has no more anaesthetics to give him. Cotton, gauze and saline solution will run out this week if aid does not arrive, he says, adding that six months of supplies have been used up in the past six weeks. ‘We are running short of everything—drugs, dressings.’ He feared the hospital would have to buy salt, boil it, and use it to sterilize wounds. ‘The problem is that there is no way we can get the drugs in here now because of the Antonovs bombing the area, making it very dangerous to fly supplies in from Kenya.’ Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir will not allow foreign aid agencies inside Blue Nile or the neighbouring state of South Kordofan, where the government has been fighting SPLM-N forces for months.” (Agence France-Presse [dateline: Kurmuk], October 10, 2011)
“Atar is the only doctor in Kurmuk, which has the only hospital between state capital Damazin, and neighbouring Ethiopia. Nurse Walid Solomon says 20-year-old soldier Satdam Anima is the seventh amputee victim the hospital has dealt with. He was hit by ‘the big bullet of the Antonov.’ Atar, with Solomon’s assistance, sews up the stump near the left shoulder, and Satdam’s eyes roll in pain. The lack of blood donors mean that the hospital’s 24 nurses donate blood to keep patients alive. The aerial bombardment in and around Kurmuk is evident and audible. ‘In the first war, there was peace in the villages; now they [Antonovs] bomb even the villages—that’s the problem; and the increasing accuracy of the bombing is leading to rising patient numbers as the weeks go by,’ Atar said.” (UN IRIN [dateline: Kurmuk], October 12, 2011)
“At the beginning of October, locals say a bomb killed half a dozen people in Maiyes, a village near Ethiopia’s border. Holding a piece of twisted iron shrapnel next to the churned earth around the crater, neighbour Mahmoud Abdanafi Jundi says the village buried the victims’ bodies in one grave. ‘When the bomb hit, the people in the house over there, three of them were killed. The people who were living here also died. A child over there was also killed,’ he said, gesturing to thatched huts that now lie empty.” (Reuters [dateline: Kurmuk], October 13, 2011)
“They fled their village of Sally after a bombing raid. But even in this temporary camp she has not found safety. ‘I don’t know why the Antonov came and bombed us, but we left our village and came here,’ she said. ‘And after we came here, we found that the Antonov is coming also to this place.’ Earlier that day, she narrowly escaped being hit by shrapnel from a bomb dropped in a river bed where villagers were searching for scraps of gold to sell for food. When the bombs hit their target, the results are deadly. A crater in the ground was all that was left of one family’s hut in Maiyes village, about 20 kilometres from the front line. Household possessions, including a child’s shoe, were scattered around. Relatives and neighbours held up twisted pieces of shrapnel, which they said had ripped apart the family of six.”
“‘One of them was pregnant and it cut her stomach,’ said Heder Abusita, the village chief. ‘Rueana Murdis also was killed here with her small kid. And also there is Bushara. He died here in this house. His feet were cut, and his stomach also was cut.’” (The National [AE] [dateline: Kurmuk], October 19, 2011)
“Huwa Gundi, 21, sits on a sheet outside two makeshift tents near her home village of Sali, where her extended family of eight now live off one meal a day. Cradling her four-month-old baby, Fatma, she says her three other children have died since the start of the conflict in Sudan’s Blue Nile State in early September.  ‘They were sick, and they died; there was no medicine,’ Gundi said, adding that Fatma now has diarrhoea and a fever at night. ‘We heard the voice of the Antonov [plane used by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for dropping bombs]. We know it well,’ she said, referring to the bombing of her village, Sali, which she and her family were forced to abandon.  ‘We don’t have anything to eat; we just go into the bush and then in the old farms we find some “dura” [sorghum] that is growing and we just make porridge,’ she said.” (UN IRIN [dateline: Kurmuk], October 13, 2011)
Either the world very soon finds the political will to make clear to Khartoum that there will be intolerable consequences if they proceed with their policies of extermination, or history will record that the U.S and a great many others were willing to accommodate what it knew to be mass human destruction, defined by widespread and systematic atrocity crimes, and do nothing but weakly exhort those responsible to behave better.  It will be one of the ugliest chapters in the grim history of the past century.

(