Insecurity threatens UN envoy’s trip in Darfur
Nov 16, 2006 (EL-GENEINA) — U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland arrived in Darfur on Thursday to find security so bad he could not visit the camps outside el-Geneina town housing tens of thousands of displaced Darfuris.
So they came to him with pleas for help.
“We beg you to take us out of here to any other country, any other place,” elderly Darfuri al-Zein Eid Abdel Banaat told Egeland after trekking to the town from the camp where he lives.
“I plead with you for your help — we want our lives back.”
A day after Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha told journalists security had greatly improved in Darfur, Egeland’s three-day trip was in doubt after Sudanese officials said all his proposed destinations were too insecure for him to visit.
The Darfuris who met Egeland urged him to bring U.N. troops to protect them, saying the African Union monitoring force had done nothing to help.
“The African Union cannot even protect themselves so how can they be expected to protect civilians?” said Abdallah Adam Abdallah from Ardamata camp.
The African Union (AU) has 7,000 troops in the vast western region, where some 200,000 people have died in three years of violence and more than 2.5 million have fled their homes.
The United Nations hopes to reinforce the AU force with hundreds of peacekeepers and technical support, eventually forming a large “hybrid” force under joint command. Sudan has rejected that, insisting that the AU must remain in charge.
“WILD WEST”
El-Geneina is the capital of West Darfur and borders Chad which, in the throes of its own insurgency, declared a state of emergency this week.
Aid workers call West Darfur state the “wild, wild west.” It has 800,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) but access to those in need is worse than in any other Darfur region. Travel is only possible by air as armed bandits plague the roads.
Aid workers have to leave the eight camps surrounding el-Geneina by late afternoon before the nightly shooting begins.
Trying to investigate attacks this week on villages north of the town, AU patrols were attacked twice and forced to retreat.
The conflict has spilled across the border with tens of thousands of Chadians fleeing attacks on their villages.
N’Djamena accuses Khartoum of supporting its rebels while Khartoum says Chadian President Idriss Deby aids Darfur rebels. A myriad of armed groups traverse the long and porous border.
“We expect at any moment an attack on the camps because there are so many new armed men who aim to close all the camps and send us home,” said Abdallah.
“Now the Janjaweed are patrolling inside the camps and they threaten the IDPs not to stay in the camps but to go home to their villages,” he said.
Khartoum armed militia to quell the mostly non-Arab tribes who took up arms in 2003 accusing the government of marginalising the remote west. Known locally as Janjaweed, the militia are accused of a campaign of rape, murder and pillage.
(Reuters)