U.S official says fighting in western Sudan has killed more than 7,000 people since February
By ANDREW ENGLAND Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 30, 2003 (AP) — Fighting in a dirt-poor region of western Sudan has killed some 7,000 people and forced some 600,000 others to flee their homes during the last eight months, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.
The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region is the worst in the western part of Africa’s largest country since Sudan gained independence in 1956 and threatens the stability of northern Sudan, said Andrew Natsios, head of the United States Agency for International Development.
“Three hundred villages have been burned to the ground, there are 7,000 casualties since February, and there are 600,000 people displaced,” Natsios told reporters in neighboring Kenya. “This is very serious; we don’t want to have an end to the war in the south and a new war starting in the west. We want the whole country to be at peace.”
Natsios, who is also the U.S. humanitarian envoy for Sudan, said the fighting in Darfur was in part driven by conflicts between nomads and farmers battling over land.
Nearly a fifth of Sudan’s 30 million people live in the region where cycles of drought and decertification have shrunk its vast grazing areas.
The situation worsened earlier this year when a group demanding self-determination for the region, attacked Sudanese government troops. In September, the government and the Darfur Liberation Army agreed to a 45-day cease-fire brokered by Idriss Deby, president of Chad, Sudan’s neighbor to the west.
Deby has been meeting this week in Abeche in eastern Chad with Sudanese officials following increased rebel attacks against Sudanese government targets. Many of the rebels come from Deby’s Zaghawa tribe whose members live on both sides of the border.
Earlier this month, nine Sudanese drivers were killed while delivering relief food in the region. The Sudanese were working for a private firm contracted by the U.N. World Food Program, Natsios said.
Natsios was in Kenya after visiting both northern and southern Sudan as efforts to end a 20-year civil war in the south inch toward their conclusion.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell met Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha and John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, on Oct. 22 to pressure the warring parties to reach a peace deal by the end of the year.
The fighting in Darfur “doesn’t threaten the north-south peace agreement, but it certainly threatens the stability of the north,” Natsios said.
He said the United States was willing to help implement agreements to end the fighting in both Darfur and the south, adding that the United States was committed to helping rebuild country if there is peace.
“We are committed to it, the (U.S.) president (George W. Bush) is committed to it, Secretary Powell is committed to it, if there’s an agreement that’s implemented,” Natsios said. “The United States government has spent 1.7 billion dollars in humanitarian relief in Sudan keeping people alive in the middle of a war, it’s about time that ended and we start now a reconstruction and development program.”
The latest southern conflict erupted in 1983 when rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. More than 2 million people have been killed in the war, mainly through war-induced drought.
Powell has said U.S. sanctions imposed on Sudan would be reviewed if a peace deal is reached, and Natsios said the sanctions would have to be lifted before the United States could begin development programs in the north, including Darfur.
“Part of the sanctions are symbolic, and they are important to the government of Sudan, some of the sanctions are important because they do preclude us from doing reconstruction and development work in the north,” Natsios told The Associated Press. “The peace agreements will affect our ability to do development work in Darfur because the peace agreements affect the sanctions regime in the United States.”
The United States has imposed a series of sanctions against Sudan since President Omar el-Bashir seized power in a 1989 coup.