Sudan expels representatives of two British aid groups

KHARTOUM, Nov 29 (AFP) — Sudan expelled the representatives of two top British aid organizations, setting a 48 hour deadline for them to quit the country and accusing the pair of meddling in its politics.

Displaced Sudanese women queue for food at a refugee camp on the outskirts of El-Fasher. (AFP).

The move came as aid agencies operating in the troubled Darfur region warned that deteriorating security conditions could worsen the plight of more than 1.6 million displaced persons there.

The decision to expel the officials from the Oxfam and Save the Children was announced in a letter sent to the aid groups by the country’s acting humanitarian aid commissioner general.

In the letter, Abdul Khaliq al-Hussein Habiballah claimed that the two had “exceeded the limits of humanitarian work and the laws of the country,” which state that “humanitarian work must be far from political objectives.”

He added that in view of this, the government had decided to declare the two “persona non-grata” and ordered them to “leave the country within 48 hours.”

The letter argued that the two officials had also breached the terms of an agreement that their organizations signed with the Sudanese government, without elaborating on the nature of the violation.

Both Oxfam and Save the Children have been active providing humanitarian assistance to thousands of internally displaced persons in the strife-torn Darfur.

International humanitarian agencies have in recent weeks blamed government forces and rebels in the region for an escalation of the 21-month conflict, which has left tens of thousands dead.

The surge in the fighting, despite the signing in November of a security and humanitarian protocol by the warring sides, shocked aid agencies into fleeing the region, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without food.

Visiting European Union aid commissioner Louis Michel on Saturday denounced continued violations of the protocols signed in Abuja, Nigeria, and also truce the parties signed in April 2003 in the Chadian capital of Ndjamena.

“The violation of the Abuja agreements on a daily basis has to stop,” said Michel in a statement distributed to reporters accompanying him to Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state.

The situation “has deteriorated to such an extent that the aid workers have been forced to flee the region,” it added.

The United Nations food relief agency, the World Food Programme, suspended its operations in most of western Sudan’s North Darfur state following a surge in fighting between government forces and rebels.

It was the latest in a string of international humanitarian organizations to shelve their activities in various parts of the region due to renewed hostilities.

“The World Food Programme has temporarily suspended all its operations in North Darfur, except for its activities in the city of El Fasher,” said Simon Pluess, a spokesman for the WFP in Geneva.

“WFP personnel and those from many non-governmental organisations have been withdrawn from the field as a preventive measure,” he told AFP.

North Darfur has been the scene of some of the fiercest battles between government-allied Arab Janjaweed militias and ethnic minority rebels, especially the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA).

The SLA, one of the groups in the local rebellion, captured the town of Tawila in North Darfur on November 22.

A convoy with 235 tonnes of food from El Fasher that was trying to reach Tawila and another town, Kapkabiya, was stopped because of the fighting, the WFP said.

Aid agencies have been struggling for months to reach all the displaced people in the region.

More than 300,000 people in North Darfur are now cut off from essential food supplies, Pluess said.