Violence anew in Sudan’s south and west
By WILLIAM M. REILLY
UNITED NATIONS, July 08, 2004 (UPI) — Armed bandits are reported to have attacked civilians and humanitarian workers in the violence-wracked Darfur region of western Sudan, while rebels of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army reportedly attacked civilians in southern Sudan.
Marie Okabe told reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York Thursday officials were concerned about attacks by highwaymen on humanitarian convoys.
U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations are bringing relief to at least 2 million people affected by the year-long conflict between the Sudanese government, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the south, western rebel groups — the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement — and the Khartoum-supported Janjaweed militias.
Last Saturday the Sudanese government and the United Nations issued a communique in which the government promised to disarm the militias, bring the perpetrators of human rights abuses to justice, and remove any obstacles to humanitarian access.
The communique followed talks between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Sudan’s President Omer al-Bashir and Annan’s visit to camps for internally displaced people in Darfur and camps for refugees in Chad.
Annan told reporters Wednesday Khartoum knows that if it does not meet its pledges, then the Security Council is ready to take action against it. He said the government also has several clear incentives to do as it has promised.
Sudan “would be flooded with investments, debt relief (and) economic assistance” if it reaches a peace deal in Darfur, the secretary-general said, but would face “additional measures” from the council if it did not take credible steps to disarm the Janjaweed and end the fighting.
“They are thinking in terms of peace dividends, and yet if they do not settle Darfur and make peace comprehensively, as I told them, (then) nobody invests in bad neighborhoods. Sudan would be a bad neighborhood and investors will not come in and you will not get the assistance you need.”
Okabe said Khartoum has pledged to send 6,000 police officers to Darfur to quell the violence. Local U.N. officials said they would monitor the deployment.
She said aid workers also remain concerned about sanitation levels in many of the 137 camps for internally displaced persons, called IDPs by the United Nations.
At Mornei in west Darfur, where 60,000 IDPs live, the Sudanese government prevented an aid agency with sanitation experience from setting up operations, Okabe said. Relief workers fear poor sanitation conditions contribute to spreading of diseases.
The Integrated Regional Information Networks of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Thursday cited reports surfacing of attacks in southern Sudan in which more than 100 people allegedly were killed late last month by Ugandan rebels belonging to the Lord’s Resistance Army.
“The reports we got indicate that the LRA attacked people in the villages and in the fields. They (the LRA) killed many of them,” a relief worker told IRIN, adding the dead numbered more than 100.
He added, “The villages are situated between Torit and Juba, (and) are remote and inaccessible, because some are either in areas controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army or the government forces.”
The Equatorial Defense Forces, a local militia group allied to the SPLM/A, said in a statement Wednesday that 122 had been killed. It said the LRA, which has bases in southern Sudan, had killed the villagers June 25-27.
The EDF said it had engaged the LRA for three days, killing 20 rebels and losing seven fighters.
“Three task forces of LRA numbering up to 2,000 men were ferried from their positions in Torit and Juba-Torit road, to Koro Lakabata, about 9 miles from Torit. From this position, the heavily armed LRA marched on foot to Ngangala near the government garrison of Jabal Mille,” the EDF said. “The rebels launched attacks against the villages of Jabal Guttni and Khawr Englizi, overrunning and ransacking these villages, burning and looting everything.”
The IRIN also said former LRA officers Wednesday requested the Ugandan government hold peace talks with the rebels, saying this was the only way to end the war that had ravaged northern Uganda.
There was no immediate response reported.
The LRA has fought the Uganda government since 1986, waging a brutal campaign that has displaced about 1.6 million people. The rebels have particularly targeted children, abducting thousands of young boys and girls for recruitment into their ranks, or to be turned into “wives” for its commanders.
From the Ugandan capital of Kampala, the United Nations’ IRIN reported Thursday the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has sent a mission to northwestern Uganda to assess the situation following an influx of Congolese refugees fleeing renewed fighting in the northeastern district of Ituri in the eastern Congo.
Hundreds of refugees were reported to have crossed into the Ugandan district of Nebbi, about 300 miles northwest of the capital.
The Kampala office of UNHCR said it was waiting for the mission’s final report on the situation along the northwestern border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.