Visiting U.S. officials say still much work to be done in Darfur
By ED JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
AL-FASHER, Sudan, Aug 31, 2004 (AP) — A visiting American official on Tuesday said his visit to a displaced persons camp in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region was “very disturbing” and said neither Sudan, the United Nations nor the international community were doing enough to address the crisis.
Richard Holbrooke, a former U.N. ambassador, spoke to reporters on his arrival at Al-Fasher airport after touring Krinding camp near El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state with U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat.
“What we have seen is very moving, very disturbing, and there is an enoromous amount that needs to be done still in the humanitarian area and beyond that,” Holbrooke said.
The Sudanese government is under intense international pressure to restore calm across this swath of western Sudan, where an 18-month insurgency has killed more than 30,000 people and driven more than 1 million from their homes.
A 30-day period given by the United Nations for the Sudanese government to rein in the Janjaweed — Arab militiamen accused of the violence against black African farmers — or face penalties expired Monday.
A report from U.N. assessment teams who were on the ground in Darfur last week checking on the government’s efforts may not be ready to go the Security Council until Thursday. The U.N. special envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, was to brief the Security Council on Thursday.
Asked whether he was satisfied with the progress made by Sudan, Holbrooke answered: “No, I am not.”
“I do not think that anyone involved, the Sudanese government, the United Nations, the international community, my own country is yet doing enough,” he said. “Everyone needs to do more. The core of this is a political problem and the humanitarian crisis will go on as long as the political issue is not resolved.”
Corzine, speaking to The Associated Press after he and Holbrooke met with African Union cease-fire commission officials in Al-Fasher, echoed that there was a lot of work left to be done.
“Maybe 30 days was an unrealistitc timetable. I think the security and political situation is almost untouched at this point,” he said.
Underscoring the questions about security in Darfur, international aid agencies said they lost radio contact Saturday with eight Sudanese aid workers who were registering displaced villagers in rebel territory.
Three days of searches on the ground and by helicopter have turned up little that could help locate the workers three from the U.N. World Food Program and five from the Sudanese Red Crescent.
The aid workers had a satellite phone and walkie talkies, but efforts to contact them have proved fruitless.
Sudanese officials charged that the aid workers had been kidnapped by rebels waging an 18 month insurgency against the government.
However, Minni Minnawi, secretary-general of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, denied that the rebels were holding the aid workers.
“We ourselves suspect the government, and the Janjaweed. The area in which they were kidnapped is not in our control. It is in the control of the government and there are many Janjaweed in that area,” he told The Associated Press in Abuja, Nigeria, where rebels and government officials were participating in peace talks.
WFP officials were not prepared to immediately call the aid workers’ disappearance a kidnapping.
“We simply do not know what has happened to them,” Marcus Prior, the agency’s spokesman in Khartoum told The Associated Press.
A search and rescue operation was under way, he said, adding that a security officer in the area where radio contact was believed lost turned up little. Efforts are being coordinated in al-Fasher, he said.
In June, 16 relief workers from international aid organizations were detained for several days in North Darfur, one of the region’s three states, by the rebel Sudan Liberation Army. The rebels said they had stopped the workers to ascertain their identities because they were in a military zone. The United Nations said then that the detention was “totally unacceptable” and contradicted rebel promises to facilitate relief work.
The region south of al-Fasher where the workers went missing has in the past two years seen fierce fighting between government forces and the Sudan Liberation Army, one of two African rebel factions that took up arms in February 2003 claiming discrimination by the Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum.
An April 8 cease-fire is rarely observed and in recent weeks both sides have accused each other of attacks.
Low-level exchanges between government and rebels were reported Monday and last Wednesday and Thursday within a 30-kilometer (18.5-mile) range of al-Fasher, but it was difficult to say what the situation was further out in recent days.
The governor of North Darfur, Othman Mohammed Youssef, on Tuesday accused the rebels of hampering the aid effort.
“The rebels, in truth, in northern Darfur, they are the main obstacles to the humanitarian relief effort and for the deployment of the police in the camps,” he told The Associated Press.
“These rebels are carrying out daily violations of the cease-fire which is a major obstacle for the humanitarian relief effort.”
Aid workers have not expressed similar complaints about the rebels. Instead, aid agencies had complained in the past about the government preventing them from getting workers and aid to Darfur, scene of what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In recent weeks, though, U.N. and other aid officials have said the government was more cooperative and had removed obstacles.
The insurgency began in February 2003 escalating years of low-level conflict between black African farmers and Arab herders who competed for water and land.
Human rights groups, the U.S. Congress and U.N. officials accuse the government of trying to crush the rebellion by backing Arab militiamen in a scorched earth campaign. Khartoum has repeatedly denied backing the Janjaweed, who are blamed for killing thousands of black African farmers, raping women and driving more than 1 million villagers from their homes.
APTN producer Navine Mabro contributed to this report from Khartoum