Sudanese army and allied militias block aid to the displaced
WASHINGTON, Feb 4, 2004 (IPS) — The Sudanese Army and allied militias have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee villages and towns in the country’s western Darfur province in the past year and are now blocking humanitarian aid to the refugees, says the rights group Amnesty International (AI).
The United Nations reported last week there are now an estimated one million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Darfur, and at least 110,000 more in neighbouring Chad. The world body said some 3.5 million people — more than one-half off Darfur’s indigenous population — are now “war-affected”.
On Tuesday the U.S. Agency for International Development warned of a “looming humanitarian crisis” in the region.
“The United States calls upon all parties to the conflict in Darfur to facilitate immediate, safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian organisations to all in need and to abide by international humanitarian law,” added USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, in a statement.
In a 43-page report released this week, based largely on personal testimonies by refugees along the Chad-Sudan border, Amnesty appealed for all armed groups, including two rebel groups active in the region, to cease their attacks and permit relief groups free access to refugees in both Darfur and across the border in Chad.
Amnesty noted that army and militia attacks have even followed refugees into Chad, and stressed that Khartoum bears special responsibility for what is an increasingly desperate situation.
“There is clear evidence of cooperation between government forces and government-aligned militia,” or the “Janjawid”, according to the report, ‘Darfur: Too Many People Killed for No Reason’.
“The Sudanese government should cease all support and supplies to the Janjawid or establish a clear chain of command and control over them, including making them accountable for abuses,” it added.
Amnesty noted the National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Khartoum had failed to condemn the Janjawid’s attacks or even to conduct an investigation.
“By its silence in the face of abuses, the Sudanese government is condoning or encouraging further abuses,” it said. “Government forces and its aligned militia must immediately end the targeting of civilians.”
The report comes amid concern that peace talks between Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which had looked set to conclude at the end of December with a peace accord ending 21 years of civil war might be in trouble.
The Kenya-based talks, in which the United States and several European countries, as well as Sudan’s African neighbours, have been deeply involved, have made major progress in resolving key issues but recessed for several weeks last month so that government negotiators could take part in the annual haj pilgrimage to the holy Islamic site of Mecca.
The civil war, which pits the predominantly Arab, Islamic government against the African, non-Islamic indigenous population of southern Sudan, has resulted in the deaths of more than two million people, most of them in the south, say human rights groups.
The conflict in Darfur also has an ethnic component, although the warring parties are all predominantly Muslim. The traditional farming population there is black, while the Janjawid, or “armed men on horseback”, are members of Arab tribes.
Amnesty said the new conflict was touched off last winter when two opposition groups representing the farming population, the SPLM/A and the newer Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), began attacking Sudanese government forces for failing to protect them from the Janjawid, which conducted raids for plunder and slaves.
The government retaliated by giving free rein to the Janjawid, who intensified their raids of rural communities, killing hundreds of people, seizing their livestock, burning fields, razing entire villages, and ultimately forcing more than one million people to flee their homes.
Civilians seeking refuge within Darfur or across the border in Chad have also been attacked, added the report.
Darfur faces a growing humanitarian crisis, due to government restrictions on access to the displaced and its failure to protect them. Similarly, in Chad, humanitarian assistance is hampered not only by harsh living conditions and the region’s remoteness, but also by insecurity.
Last week, journalists who trekked there reported seeing bombs being dropped by Sudanese planes in the Chadian border town of Tina. At least three civilians were killed.
Nor was that bombing raid a rare occurrence in the region, according to Amnesty, which reported that Khartoum has “bombed indiscriminately towns and villages suspected of harbouring or sympathising with” the rebels. Many civilians, it said, were killed in those raids.
One village, Khasan Abu Gamra, has been subject to almost continuous bombing, according to testimony in the report. “The planes bomb anytime and everywhere, sometimes four times a day, in the morning, in the evening. They bomb so much that we can’t go to cultivate our fields.”
But the source of greatest devastation has been the Janjawid, who have singled out civilians in what appears to be a campaign of terror.
One refugee reported an operation in which he said the militia, some wearing army uniforms, first cordoned off the village of Mulri, and then carried out a raid in which at least 82 people were killed, some of them shot but “others … burnt alive in their houses.”
Displacement has also resulted in the total disruption of the subsistence agricultural economy. “Ground attacks seemed not only to aim at killing the people, but also their livelihoods and their very means of subsistence,” according to the report.
“In a region prone to drought and underdevelopment, the destruction of houses and crops bears terrible consequences on the coping strategies of the local population”, whose very survival is thus under threat, it added.