Tuesday, April 13, 2004

U.N. Rights Team Blocked In Sudan; Experts Question Cease-Fire

The United Nations accused the Sudanese government today of blocking a U.N. human rights team from investigating widespread atrocities in the embattled Darfur region, while experts in Washington yesterday questioned the Sudanese government's commitment to its fledgling cease-fire with Darfur's rebel groups.

Amid reports that government-backed Arab militiamen were continuing to ethnically cleanse the non-Arab, black population in Darfur despite a declared truce halting all violence, U.N. human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said today in Geneva that the U.N. investigative team "might have to come back" if Khartoum continues to refuse access to Darfur. Talks between the United Nations and Khartoum on access to Darfur are now "in suspension," Diaz said.

The 45-day, renewable cease-fire, signed Thursday, is slated to end a yearlong civil war in Darfur between two rebels groups - the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement - and the Sudanese government. The agreement guarantees safe passage of humanitarian aid to more than 700,000 displaced persons from Darfur, grants the release of prisoners of war and promises to disarm militias.

The bloodshed, which has driven some 100,000 Sudanese into neighboring Chad, was mandated to stop within 72 hours of signing the cease-fire. Yet "the rebels have been reporting continued attacks" by the Janjawid, Arab militiamen backed by the Sudanese government, "in the Fur areas, near Nyala and in Jebel Marra as early as [Sunday]," Gerard Gallucci, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Khartoum, said at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The reports of continued hostilities by the Janjawid are unconfirmed, said Gallucci.

Noting U.N. reports describing rapes, lootings, burnings and bombings in the Janjawid's alleged campaign to efface the non-Arab population from Darfur, Gallucci said that "by anyone's definition this is ethnic cleansing." The Sudanese government has vigorously denied allegations of a government-supported ethnic cleansing campaign, and has pushed to remove explicit references to the Janjawid in any peace deal with the rebels.

Gallucci noted that the government has been reluctant to internationalize the Darfur conflict out of fear that outside pressure would destabilize ongoing peace talks with Sudan's southern-based rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army, which has inched closer to agreement over the past weeks.

For Sudanese scholar and Wilson Center fellow Jok Madut Jok, the cease-fire is the direct result of mounting international pressure on the Sudanese government over the past weeks regarding its policies in Darfur.

U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland accused the Janjawid recently of coordinating a "scorched-earth" campaign to ethnically cleanse members of the Fur, Zaghawas and Massalit ethnic communities in Darfur. On Wednesday U.S. President George W. Bush urged the Sudanese government to "immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population." U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan echoed similar sentiments in a statement Thursday calling for "an end to the attacks against civilians."

Concurrently, Human Rights Watch has accused the Sudanese government of recruiting, arming and financially supporting some 20,000 Janjawid militiamen, and charged the Sudanese army with conducting joint operations with the Janjawid to clear non-Arab civilians from Darfur.

While Jok welcomed this recent international outcry for pushing the Sudanese government toward the cease-fire with Darfur rebels, he questioned the government's sincerity in holding to the truce. "The humanitarian cease-fire [means] virtually nothing without additional international guarantees," he said. Jok accused African leaders of being too quick to condemn the international community for not acting against Rwanda's genocide a decade ago and now the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, when "they themselves, in the U.N. and the Security Council . have not condemned it."

Jok urged the international community to "transform this flimsy agreement [in Darfur] into something that will trigger powerful international sanctions if it is violated." If the current cease-fire fails, Gallucci said that the United States would be prepared to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution on Darfur, although no such decision has been made.

Originally published in U.N. Wire.