Sudan’s western war threatens to destabilise region
By Matthew Green
NAIROBI, March 28 (Reuters) – Civil war raging in western Sudan threatens to fuel conflict throughout the giant country and in neighbouring Chad unless countries like Britain and the United States do more to stop it, a global think-tank said.
“Sudan, where prospects for peace had begun to look so promising in 2003, has become a potential horror story in 2004,” said John Prendergast, special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group (ICG).
The Brussels-based ICG said in a report issued over the weekend that the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan endangered progress made at peace talks to end a separate, 20-year war that has ravaged the south.
The fighting in Darfur, which has escalated sharply during the last few months, has forced 830,000 people to flee their homes and killed thousands, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, ICG said.
The 30-page report said countries like the United States and Britain had avoided putting public pressure on Khartoum to stop the attacks in the west for fear of jeopardising progress made at peace talks to end the war in the south.
“The international community must make the Sudanese government realise it can no longer be treated as a partner in the peace process if Darfur continues to burn,” said Stephen Ellis, ICG’s Africa director.
The fighting in Darfur pits two rebel groups who emerged from among African tribes in February last year against government forces and horse-riding “Janjaweed” militia drawn from Arab communities in the barren region.
The rebels accuse the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum of excluding the region of seven million from power and depriving it of resources. The government describes the rebels as bandits.
The ICG report said the government backs the Arab militia as a proxy force in Darfur, sending its fighters to burn African villages, kill their inhabitants and rape women in a scorched earth policy designed to crush the uprising.
The U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sudan said this month the systematic killings conducted by the pro-government militias were reminiscent of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, a statement that sparked outrage in the government.
The ICG said the situation in Darfur, whose African Zaghawa tribe overlaps with neighbouring Chad, had helped to determine the result of power struggles in Chad for decades and could threaten stability in the impoverished country.
Sudan’s government said last week it will hold internationally sponsored peace talks in Chad with the Darfur rebels, but ICG said Chad might find it difficult to provide effective mediation without strong backing.
The report said Chad’s President Idriss Deby was officially supporting Khartoum, but Zaghawas within his security forces were supplying rebels through the Chad army, compromising Chad’s position as a neutral broker.