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    Hope in Darfur?
    Le Monde | Editorial

    Monday 08 May 2006

    It's too early to say whether the partial peace agreement on Darfur signed May 5 in Abuja (Nigeria), will return a semblance of peace to this vast neglected region of western Sudan that has been ravaged since 2003 by one of the most violent conflicts on the planet, with its 180,000 dead and two million displaced persons.

    The text has been signed by the representatives of only one of the three rebel movements that are demanding a better distribution of wealth and struggling against the ethnic cleansing practiced by Arab militias with the Khartoum government's support. It therefore risks having a limited impact on the ground, all the more so as the Janjaweed militias in question - not represented at the Abuja negotiations - will not necessarily feel themselves bound by the Sudanese government's signature.

    Nonetheless, the agreement at the end of a five day marathon conducted by American Assistant Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, there where twenty months of negotiations under the aegis of the African Union (AU) had led nowhere, testifies to at least a relative success of American willpower for Darfur.

    The Americans, who are bogged down in Iraq and have described Darfur as "genocide," cannot allow themselves to be held responsible for a new humanitarian scandal. The 15,000 marchers in the "Save Darfur" demonstration in Washington on April 30, the heterogeneous mobilization of certain swathes of American society against a "new Rwanda" forced the Bush administration to rapidly obtain demonstrable results.

    After months of extensions, undoubtedly linked to Washington's desire to protect Sudan, a partner in the war against terrorism, America has demonstrated that it can weigh in concretely on the side of peace. The fear of a contagion of the violence, concretized by the destabilization attempts in Chad where the United States holds oil interests, no doubt counted. The Abuja agreement has already produced one positive effect: Khartoum no longer excludes deployment of UN forces to replace the AU soldiers who have been unable to enforce the cease-fire.

    But the dynamic created by the agreement could be a mere flash in the pan should the international community consider it an end in itself. If rich countries should forget that the humanitarian organizations charged with the survival of Darfurians and stuck between the pincers of Khartoum's intimidations and rebel looting need active support. The World Food Program has already been forced to reduce its rations by half in the absence of adequate financing. Only a long-term mobilization will allow the hope born in Abuja to be transformed into a concrete prospect of peace for Darfur.

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    Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

 

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    Refugees Too Scared to Go Home Despite Darfur Peace Deal
    By Claire Soares
    The Independent UK

    Monday 08 May 2006

    It is going to take more than a couple of signatures on a piece of paper to persuade Kaltam Ali to go back to her home in Darfur.

    Janjaweed militia torched her village in Sudan two years ago, forcing her to flee to Chad. She sought refuge in a village near the frontier. But last month, the "devils on horseback" staged a cross-border raid. They stole the family's cattle and executed her father with a single bullet to the head.

    So it is little wonder that, as news of a long-awaited Darfur peace deal filtered down to the Gaga refugee camp where she now lives, the 28-year-old did not rush to pack her bags. "I don't have confidence in the Sudanese government to rein in the Janjaweed," she said. "And if these marauders are still in Darfur, how on earth can we be expected to go back and live there?"

    Jan Egeland, the UN's chief humanitarian co-ordinator, began a tour of the war-scarred Darfur region yesterday. He will also visit eastern Chad this week, where 200,000 refugees are sheltering. He is likely to encounter a wall of fierce scepticism there regarding Friday's peace deal.

    After two years of African Union-sponsored talks, and last-minute pressure from the US and Britain, the Khartoum government and the main SLA faction signed an agreement in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

    But two smaller rebel groups rejected the deal. "They are our representatives and they will do what's best for us, the people of Darfur, so if they haven't signed up then there must be a good reason," said Adam Sherif, a butcher and refugee, as he listened to an Arabic news bulletin on a battered radio, propped among yellowing mounds of meat at Gaga's market.

    For many, the thought of returning to Darfur is unthinkable, unless they are compensated. "We have lost our belongings, our animals. All these things need to be sorted out before we can begin to contemplate rebuilding our lives back home," said Adama Dingila, a refugee community leader. Camped out in dust-covered tents in a barren landscape broken only by prickly thorn bushes, other refugees said they would be staying put until a UN force was on the ground in Darfur.

    The Sudanese government had said it would consider a UN presence after a peace agreement, but with the ink dry on the Abuja deal, Khartoum refused to be drawn over the weekend on whether it would give the green light to blue-helmets.

    Meanwhile, hundreds of refugees continue to arrive every week at Gaga camp.

    And then there are those such as Halima Anour Yaya, who fled Darfur only to find herself in the midst of Chad's own rebellion, caught in the crossfire between government troops and insurgents bent on ousting Idriss Deby, Chad's President. "When is this going to end?" the wizened 67-year-old said with a sigh. It is a question much of the rest of the world is asking.

 

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    Peace Pact Has Yet to Touch Lives of Darfur's Refugees
    By Lydia Polgreen
    The New York Times

    Sunday 07 May 2006

    Gereida, Sudan - If peace has arrived at her little corner of despair, Fatouma Abdullah has not heard about it.

    Just two weeks ago her father was gunned down as he tried to protect the family's herd of cattle, their only source of income, from the double onslaught of government soldiers and Arab militias on horseback, known here as the janjaweed.

    "We saw their bodies," she said, her eyes empty as she sat beneath a tree in a vast, desolate camp, describing how her father and his two brothers died. "The janjaweed killed them."

    She did not know, she said, that a peace agreement had been signed Friday by the main rebel faction, the Sudan Liberation Army, and Sudan's government, in the hope of ending the conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people and driven more than two million from their homes. And she doubted that the pact would allow her to go home to her village, Joghana, anytime soon.

    Ms. Abdullah's father was killed in what Jan Egeland, the top emergency aid official at the United Nations, described Sunday in a visit here as a "scorched earth onslaught" that has driven 250,000 people from their homes in just the past three months, deepening despair even as hopes for peace began to rise.

    "The suffering in Darfur today is massive," Mr. Egeland said in an interview after touring the camp here. "And by far it is worst for those who were displaced in this massive onslaught in the last three to four months."

    On his first visit to the Darfur region of western Sudan since the peace agreement was signed, Mr. Egeland implored the government and the rebels to adhere to the peace deal, and to stop harassing and attacking aid workers. He also implored people around the world to send more money to the vast relief operation here, which supports more than three million people, about half the population of Darfur.

    "I do fundamentally believe we have the best chance since early 2004 to see at least the beginning of the end of this hemorrhage of human life that is Darfur today," Mr. Egeland said. "The alternative to peace through this agreement is too horrendous for any of us now to contemplate."

    But many perils stand in the way of the peace agreement, including the failure of negotiators to persuade two other rebel factions to sign it.

    That, and the deepening crisis in Darfur, means that the coming months of the rainy season will bring deeper misery. A shortage of money has forced the World Food Program to halve rations in Darfur, and other aid agencies also face deep cuts after a slump in donations.

    Aid workers are "totally overwhelmed" by the newly displaced, Mr. Egeland said.

    That was clear in Gereida, where only three organizations struggle to provide food, water and health care to 120,000 people who have gathered here from the now-empty countryside. Half of those people arrived in the last six months. Rebels patrol the town brandishing automatic weapons, in violation of the 2004 cease-fire agreement. Roads are too dangerous to travel, so supplies are flown in.

    "The humanitarian situation here is desperate," said Leonard Tedd, a public health engineer for Oxfam, a global relief organization. "The population has doubled, and we are trapped."

    Gereida has become the epicenter of the crisis here. Before the war began in 2003, it was a crossroads town of no more than 50,000 people on the important north-south axis between Nyala, the regional capital, and Buram, a major market town in Southern Darfur. Beginning in 2004, when the Sudan Liberation Army attacked Buram, this region became a battleground.

    Rebel forces and their herds of cattle hid in its villages, and its farm fields were booty for Arab militias allowed to loot at will by government forces. The peace agreement is intended to end this cycle of violence.

    But before the newest move toward peace occurred, a terrifying crescendo of violence came, one that has not stopped reverberating. In a final push to control as much territory as possible in advance of peace negotiations, rebel groups, the government and the Arab militias battled fiercely for control of dozens of villages around Gereida.

    The violence left the 120,000 people who have been huddling in the vast camp at Gereida skeptical. Medina Hamed said she fled her village seven months ago when government soldiers attacked. She said she could never trust the government again.

    Her family was stuck in the bush with no food or water, so her husband took their two sons, Ahmed, 7, and Hamed, 9, along with a posse of men, to see if anything was left in their village, she recalled. But in the vast, arid scrubland they met janjaweed militants, who she said slaughtered everyone but her husband.

    "I cry for my sons every day, but they are gone," Ms. Hamed said. "I will never get them back."

    Mr. Egeland was supposed to visit this camp last month, but the Sudanese authorities abruptly told him not come. They gave a variety of reasons - the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, then the furor over the cartoons depicting the prophet in a Danish newspaper, then concerns that they could not guarantee the security of Mr. Egeland, who is Norwegian.

    On his arrival in Darfur on Sunday, Mr. Egeland was greeted by what appeared to be a carefully choreographed demonstration of a few dozen men chanting, "No to U.N. occupation."

    But the Sudanese government has said it now supports a United Nations peacekeeping force to replace the overwhelmed African Union force of 7,000 that is charged with enforcing the much violated 2004 cease-fire agreement.

    Salah Mostafa, the deputy governor of Southern Darfur, said at a meeting with Mr. Egeland in Nyala, "We as a government will spare no effort" to secure the peace.