On Kiir’s plea for EU pressure on Darfur rebels
Editorial, Khartoum Monitor
Oct 10, 2005 — First-Vice President and president of the government of South Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit has urged the European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana to exert pressure on Darfur rebels in a bid to seek peaceful solution to the conflict.
Indeed, Kiir’s plea to the EU chief was in place. Not quite in place was the obvious partiality with which Kiir has made his plea.
The pressure Kiir seeks from the EU should be applied across the board to comprise all parties in the conflict, including the Sudanese government, whose troops are also on the ground taking part in the fighting.
Strangely enough, Kiir’s petition for EU pressure did not involve Janjawid fighters, believed to have committed innumerable and gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity in Darfur region.
Instead of calling for biased and partial EU intervention, Kiir should think of EU’s role to mediate between all parties to the war.
Internationally, the government’s side is not as clean as Kiir would want to portray to EU chief.
Last week, chief of the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), Gana Kingibe, said he was prepared to produce film and pictures that prove Sudan’s security forces had attacked civilians in Darfur, though the Sudanese government had categorically denied AMIS allegations.
The general and widely maintained concept about Darfur war was that all parties to the conflict were responsible for breaking the truce and that the violence had included attacks by government helicopter gun-ships.
The government of Sudan, of which Kiir is an integral part and not a detached observer, is also seen as non-compliant to an Security Council resolution to hand over suspects of Darfur war criminals for trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands.
Irrespective of the official government position – so far internally – no significant trials have been carried out on suspects of Darfur war criminals as promised by Sudanese authorities.
All these de factos on the government image dilute Kiir’s plea and dismiss it as being subjective and unrealistic.
Kiir’s appeal to the troika will also put the expected SPLM’s mediators in Darfur conflict in an uncomfortable position.
His SPLM’s representatives would be eyed by Darfur rebels as impartial and siding with the government following their chief’s prejudiced palace statements.
What is needed is an international perspective of the situation in Darfur. The whole issue, in the eyes of the global community including the EU, is simply a human rights issue, not as per se, government versus rebels.
If any pressure at all is required from the troika, it should be a blanket one and should apply on all parties to Darfur war without exception.