Amnesty accuses GoS of ‘vicious, invisible war’ against its citizens in western Sudan

By Declan Walsh, The Independent

NAIROBI, Feb 03, 2004 — The Sudan government is using brutal counter-insurgency tactics against civilians to quell the escalating rebellion in western Darfur province, according to Amnesty International.

Indiscriminate bombing raids on remote villages, and widespread murder, rape and torture, are part of a “vicious, invisible war” detailed by the human rights group in a report published yesterday.

Over 600,000 people have fled their homes and at least 100,000 have scurried across the border into neighbouring Chad. Even there, however, sanctuary is not guaranteed – last week Sudanese bombers attacked a border village killing three people including a two-year-old child.

“There are too many people killed for no reason,” one refugee told researchers.

The rapid escalation in fighting comes as the Sudan government talks its way out of conflict elsewhere in the vast country. Negotiations between President Omar al Bashir’s regime and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels are inching towards resolution, promising an end to 21 years of conflict.

But the same terror tactics that characterised the southern war are now being repeated in Darfur, hundreds of miles to the north.

According to Amnesty, government planes lob bombs over remote villages suspected of harbouring sympathisers with the two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Those who survive are targeted during follow-up raids by a government-sponsored Arab milita known as the “Janjawid”, or “armed men on horses”.

The feared fighters sweep through villages, murdering, torturing and raping villagers, torching their houses and stealing cattle and crops. Kaltuma Abdallah Issa, a 15-year-old girl, was shot in the leg during one such raid.

“My father was shot dead in our home, my maternal uncle too. Those Arabs were riding horses and camels and were accompanied by government forces in vehicles,” she told researchers.

The SLA started the war in February 2003, citing Khartoum’s perceived failure to protect villages from attack by armed nomads, and years of chronic underdevelopment and marginalisation.

Since then, however, a strong ethnic polarisation has underscored the fighting. As in southern Sudan, the rebels are mostly of African origin while their enemies are Arab. Unlike the south, however, both groups are Muslims.

“It’s shifting from a protest against the government about marginalisation to a war along ethnic lines. And that is something that can be exported throughout the country,” said David Mozersky of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

The government imposed a state of emergency on Darfur in 2001, setting up special courts with draconian powers. Since then security forces have used sweeping powers of arrest, detaining government critics without charge for months on end. Media access has been restricted. The collapse of peace talks in December sparked a further escalation in fighting. Last month another 18,000 people fled into Chad, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

A major humanitarian disaster is quietly growing due to lack of access. An advance team from the Irish charity Goal recently found up to 20 families per house in Kutgum town, and thousands more sheltering on a dried-up riverbed. Medecins Sans Frontieres operates at desert camps just inside Chad. “The crisis on both sides of the border is now escalating,” said field co-ordinator Sonia Peyrasso.

So far the Darfur conflict has had little impact on the talks in neighbouring Kenya. Analysts expect the government and SPLA to sign an historic power-sharing agreement within months.

But without talks, Sudan risks being dragged into a fresh spiral of conflict just as it pulls out of the old one. “The longer it goes on the greater a threat it poses,” said Mr Mozersky of ICG. “It’s a really dangerous development.”