African Union stays hopeful about Sudan
Jan 19, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The African Union has high hopes for Darfur in 2007, planning ambitious political negotiations among warring parties and striving for a strong U.N. partnership on peacekeeping.
But more than two years into the AU’s mission, prospects for peace in Darfur have been eclipsed by worsening chaos – government air strikes and militia raids, rebel infighting, tribal clashes, and now, leprosy among refugees.
The AU is determined to remain optimistic, saying it hopes to enforce a solid cease-fire with U.N. help by the end of the year and is planning a regional peace conference in coming months.
The year 2007 is “the year of laying foundations for the future, so Darfurians can begin healing their many wounds,” said Abdul Mohammed, the head of the AU’s planned conference.
Mohammed told The Associated Press that the regional talks would aim at bringing together rebel leaders, tribal chiefs and government officials to “address the political, economic and governance issues at the root of the Darfur conflict.”
He said the conflict threatened to expand beyond Darfur.
“Disturbances spread across the region very fast,” Mohammed said.
More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003, when rebels took arms against the central Sudanese government, charging it with neglect. In response, Khartoum is accused of bombing civilian villages and arming the Arab nomads’ janjaweed militias who are blamed for the worst atrocities in the conflict.
Violence has only worsened since the government signed a peace agreement with one rebel group in May, and U.N. aid agencies warn that humanitarian efforts to save some 4 million vulnerable people in the region _including 2.5 million refugees_ will be “irreversibly jeopardized” if insecurity keeps spreading.
Some 7,000 ill-equipped and underfunded AU troops charged with the daunting task of pacifying a region nearly the size of Texas have been in Darfur since June 2004. Sudan has come under increasing international criticism for opposing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the AU troops to be replaced with 22,000 U.N. peacekeepers and police – though it recently agreed to allowing a trickle of U.N. staff and gear into Darfur to support the African force.
AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni pointed to several signs that the African peacekeepers were gaining momentum. For example, he said that AU police are again patrolling the camps that they had left after coming under attack from refugees.
Also promising is the pledge by several rebel leaders to stick to a cease-fire brokered by AU force commander Maj. Gen. Luke Aprezi in late December, Mezni said.
“Achieving unity among rebel movements is in everybody’s interest,” Mezni said.
Despite the progress and upbeat 2007 predictions, violence and disease continue to ravage Darfur.
The U.N. confirmed Thursday that 150 tribesmen were killed over the past two weeks. Some 200 people from other tribes also died this month in similar fighting, the Sudanese justice minister has said. Competition for the region’s scarce resources is one of the root causes of the Darfur conflict that regularly pits Arab nomad tribes against African farmers.
Meanwhile, the pro-government janjaweed militias have not ceased their raids against civilians, and the AU said this week it is investigating two new reports of government bombings.
The U.N. mission also said 64 people from remote villages destroyed near Sudan’s border with Chad were diagnosed with leprosy after they fled to an overflowing refugee camp.
While there have been “a few pockets of leprosy” endemic in Darfur, the new refugees who arrived in the Zaleingi camp are one of the largest diagnosed groups, World Health Organization workers said.
“They have been settled separately from the rest of the camp and are receiving medication,” WHO’s doctor Mohammed Abdi said on the telephone from West Darfur.
Further complicating the AU’s task, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is hoping to take the rotating AU chairmanship when African heads of states meet to pick the new chief at the end of the month.
Though the job is largely honorary, al-Bashir would be in the paradoxical position of being a party to the Darfur conflict and chief of the regional body meant to solve it.
This “will have a catastrophic impact on the AU role in Darfur,” the National Redemption Front said in a statement. The hard-line Darfur rebel group warned that if al-Bashir takes over as chairman, it would end all cooperation with the AU and “treat the AU peacekeepers as partisan forces.”
(AP)