US, UN mull new plan to end Darfur violence

By JOEL BRINKLEY

Jan 27, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — The broad strategy for ending the carnage in Darfur, Sudan, devised over the last two years by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, is collapsing as the violence and chaos in the region seem to grow with every passing week, United Nations and Bush administration officials say.

After three years of bloodshed that has already claimed more than 200,000 lives, officials say they are struggling to devise an effective new strategy.

“We’re working very closely with our partners to see if we can turn this around,” said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

But the obstacles and complications are multiplying.

Peace talks have nearly halted after government and Darfur-rebel negotiators, in the latest round, showed an unwillingness to seriously discuss anything except sharing Sudan’s oil wealth. A growing military conflict on the Sudan-Chad border in Darfur is further endangering hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps there. One of the Sudanese president’s latest positions, articulated in a published interview this month, is that the government-backed militias known to be behind most of the violence are actually a fictitious creation of the media and the United States Congress.

“The looming threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy draws nearer,” Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, lamented earlier this month as he urged Western nations to do more.

The international response has been so ineffectual that “people on the ground are just laughing,” said Jan Pronk, the chief United Nations envoy in Sudan.

The primary element of the present approach to end the bloodshed has been the deployment of 7,000 African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur, where they have tried without success to dampen the widespread brutality and banditry. In fact, these troops have become targets themselves. In recent months, five have been shot and killed, including one on Jan. 6.

The United States and Europe have both declined to provide further financial support for the effort, and African Union leaders say money to conduct the operation will run out in March. The Bush administration continues to push Congress to provide more money, but Congress has twice rejected the request in recent months during budget debates.

“The funds are almost exhausted,” Alpha Omar Konaré, chairman of the African Union commission, said in a report last week.

The United Nations is considering deploying a larger force of its own peacekeeping troops to replace those of the African Union, but the discussions are at an early, preliminary stage. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support for the idea this month. But the Sudanese government insists it will not accept United Nations forces on its territory, leaving Darfur and its surviving residents in limbo.

What is more, Mr. Pronk said this week, the United Nations “is not so eager” to take on troop commitments. “The U.N. has already reached its ceiling of commitments.”

Neither he nor other officials were willing to predict how this predicament might be resolved. Meanwhile, “Darfur is in a free fall,” said John Prendergast, who was director of African affairs for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. Now he is a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization.

In recent months, American officials said they were placing most of their faith in the on-again, off-again peace talks that began 18 months ago. Salim Ahmed Salim, an African Union official mediating the talks, observed after the latest negotiating session collapsed without result last month that both sides had shown little more than “deep distrust” of each other. American and United Nations officials said the only topic that the sides showed any eagerness to discuss was “wealth sharing.”

Relief agencies administering the enormous task of feeding and caring for more than three million homeless Darfurians – half the state’s population – have for many months tried to work in an environment rife with thugs, bandits, kidnappers and killers. Now, however, Sudan and Chad are building up forces and fighting skirmishes along their border in Darfur.

As a result, Mr. Pronk said he had ordered “a significant reduction in the presence of U.N. staff, and restricted U.N. access in the affected areas.” Camps holding hundreds of thousands of refugees lie on or near the border with Chad. But Mr. Pronk said relief agencies there were still providing essential services.

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when rebel groups attacked government positions, accusing the leaders in Khartoum of ignoring their region. The government struck back with a fury, enlisting local militias to massacre civilians and destroy entire villages.

The world was slow to acknowledge the problem, but in September 2004, the Bush administration stated that the carnage constituted genocide. The African Union troops began slowly arriving in Darfur last year.

So far, Mr. Prendergast added, Western nations “have used an ostrich strategy, hoping with a wing and a prayer that the African Union forces would actually succeed. But they are finally acknowledging that it is not going to work.”

Western leaders have all but given up on a key part of their strategy, trying to persuade Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, to disarm the militias that are responsible for a large part of the violence. The United States says his government continues to finance the militias, even though Sudanese officials claim to be working hard to bring peace to Darfur. A special United Nations committee said this month that the Sudanese government had “abjectly failed to fulfill its commitment to identify, neutralize and disarm militia groups.”

Mr. Bashir generally deflects questions on the Darfur violence when meeting with visiting American officials, and instead asks them to lift the economic embargo on Sudan, senior officials said. He also urges them to continue providing aid under the peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war with the south – the one bright spot in Sudan.

In a speech two weeks ago, Mr. Bashir called on the anti-government Darfur rebels to “repent.” Then, in an interview with a German newspaper two days later, he denied that the government-financed janjaweed militias existed.

On Jan. 12, Sudan’s government news agency issued a statement about the interview, saying “Field Marshall Bashir” had offered the view that “the U.S. Congress groups, which represent the Christian right and Zionist lobby, have a primarily hostile stance against Sudan and always try to incite this issue.”

(New York Times)