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Politics-Sudan: Needed in Darfur - Water, But Not Rain

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
NEWS
August 6, 2004
Posted to the web August 6, 2004

By Joyce Mulama
Nairobi
While the flurry of diplomatic activity around developments in the western
Sudanese region of Darfur continues, heavy rains are complicating efforts to
alleviate the humanitarian crisis there.
"The poor roads coupled with heavy rains there have made it difficult for aid
workers to reach the IDPs (internally displaced persons)," Ben Parker, a United
Nations spokesman on Sudan, told IPS.
As a result, he added, the UN World Food Programme had resorted to air drops
over inaccessible areas. The challenge of getting clean water supplies to
displaced persons remained however, along with the risk of cholera and
diarrhoea outbreaks amongst those without supplies.
Parker, who is based at the UN complex in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, and who
visited Darfur last month, says aid operations are also being undermined by the
shortage of relief supplies.
Although the UN has appealed for 349 million dollars for humanitarian efforts
in Darfur, only 161 million dollars have been pledged.
Parker further noted that killings and incidents of rape by the janjaweed Arab
militias in Darfur continue to be recorded in the face of Sudanese pledges to
comply with a UN resolution demanding that government crack down on these
paramilitary forces. (The term "janjaweed" means "men on horseback".)
"We have new accounts of women being raped and others being beaten while
collecting firewood. We hope though that the acts of torture will stop
following imposition of the resolution (and) we hope this will be taken
seriously by the government," he said.
The resolution, issued Jul. 30, allows for sanctions and other measures against
Khartoum if it fails to impose some control over the militias within 30 days.
The government is said to be backing the janjaweed in a campaign of terror
against three ethnic groups in Darfur: the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa.
These groups are suspected of providing support to two rebel movements, the
Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, which
started launching attacks last year. The movements claimed that government had
neglected development needs in Darfur.
Humanitarian agencies say upwards of 30,000 people have been killed in the
violence since 2003, and 1.2 million displaced. About 180,000 of these people
have fled into neighbouring Chad.
Earlier this week, the UN announced that it had signed a detailed agreement
with Sudan on disarming the militias, improving security for displaced people
and ensuring access to humanitarian aid.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has previously floated the possibility of
foreign military intervention in Sudan, to ensure the Darfur crisis does not
degenerate into a Rwandan-style massacre. France has already stationed a small
number of troops along Chad's border with Sudan to prevent incursions by the
janjaweed.
However, Khartoum has rejected the possibility of a foreign deployment: on Jul.
29, Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said any foreign military
troops would be considered aggressors.
Sudan appears to be taking a softer stance on African Union (AU) proposals to
send a 2,000-strong force to Darfur to protect AU observers - and intervene to
prevent further conflict.
"The Darfur conflict is a Sudanese affair and an African one. There is no need
to have outside military intervention. We are backing intervention of the
African Union because the conflict has direct implications on African nations
in the region," Neimat Bilal, spokeswoman for the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi,
told IPS last month (Jul. 30).
Annan said Wednesday that the UN would send a team to Addis Ababa, where the AU
is headquartered, to help the African body set up its peace-keeping force.
Sudanese officials have claimed that a month is not long enough to implement
the demands of the UN resolution. However, Jamal al-Hueres, police chief of
North Darfur state, told the Sudan Media Centre, a state-run news agency on
Thursday that the task of disarming the janjaweed would begin next week.
According to Bilal, the government has already deployed its forces in Darfur.
"We are doing our best to have something done to meet the resolution. Already
we have deployed 5,000 policemen to Darfur and the number will rise in the
coming days," she said Thursday.

   

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