Sudan peace effort ‘must include Darfur region’
By William Wallis, Financial Times
NAIROBI, Mar 04, 2004 — Ruud Lubbers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, appealed yesterday for a concerted effort to end the conflict raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
A solution to the war in the oil-rich south of the country should not be found at the expense of the people of Darfur, Mr Luubers said. He was visiting a squalid refugee camp in the barren and isolated region of neighbouring Chad where tens of thousands of Sudanese have fled into desperate conditions.
Mr Luubers’ appeal was made as the US State Department signalled a tougher position on the scorched-earth tactics used by the government of Sudan and allied militia in response to the year-old rebellion in Darfur. The fighting in western Sudan escalated last year, just as US-backed peace talks between the Muslim government in Khartoum and non-Muslim Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) rebels from the south regained momentum, inspiring international optimism that an end to Africa’s longest-running civil war was within reach.
Two separate rebel groups in western Sudan took up arms against the government in response to their perceived marginalisation at national level, as well as competition between settled African communities and Arabised nomads for scarce resources.
The Darfur conflict has strengthened the position of those analysts who have argued that Sudan’s problems are more complex than a rift between north and south, Muslims and Christians. They suggest a lasting solution to Sudan’s chronic instability cannot be achieved without a more inclusive approach.
Until recently, US and other western policy makers favoured pushing for a deal for the south without reference to Darfur and other conflicts in the north and centre of the country.
Negotiations on the future of the south taking place in Kenya are already fraught. But with no obvious end to the war in Darfur, the potential for the rebellion to attract supporters among other aggrieved groups has become harder to ignore.
Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said that the refusal of local as well as national authorities to permit unrestricted access for humanitarian workers had put as many as 1m people at imminent risk of life and livelihood.
Mr Boucher said government-supported Arab militias, known as the janjawiet, “continue to attack and burn undefended villages, murdering and raping the inhabitants, and forcing survivors into desperate flight”. The government had not responded to US offers of mediation.