War in Darfur

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War in Darfur
Darfur refugee camp in Chad.jpg
Darfur refugee camp in Chad
Date 2003-2009[1]/2010[2]
Location Darfur, Sudan
Result Unclear
Belligerents
Sudan JEM factions
Sudan NRF alliance
Bandera Darfur.svg SLM/A (Minnawi faction) [At peace]
Allegedly supported by:
 Chad
 Eritrea[4][5][6][7]		 Sudan Janjaweed
Sudan Sudanese Armed Forces
Sudan Sudanese Police
Foreign Mercenaries		 African Union
 United Nations
Commanders
Sudan Ibrahim Khalil
Sudan Ahmed Diraige
Bandera Darfur.svg Minni Minnawi		 Sudan Omar al-Bashir
Sudan Musa Hilal
Sudan Hamid Dawai
Sudan Ali Kushayb
Sudan Ahmed Haroun[8]		 Rodolphe Adada
United Nations Martin Luther Agwai
Strength
NRF/JEM: Unknown
 N/A 9,065
Casualties and losses
700+ fighters killed
300,000 civilians killed
[9]2,850,000 Displaced
(UN estimate)
450,000 Displaced (Sudanese estimate)		 106 government troops killed
1 Russian mercenary killed (raid on Omdurman and Khartoum)[10]		 51 peacekeepers killed

The Darfur Conflict[11] [12] began in Darfur, Sudan, in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in Darfur took up arms, accusing the government of oppressing black Africans in favor of Arabs. There are various estimates on the number of human casualties. One side was composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Afro-Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan. These tribes are mainly camel-herding nomads. The other side was made up of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the non-Arab Muslim Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, is accused of providing financial assistance to the militia, and of participating in joint attacks targeting civilians.[13][14]

Contents

[edit] Genocide in Sudan

[edit] Background on the Darfur Genocide

"The [Sudanese] government [made up of Arabs] has launched scattered attacks on local African tribes for years. But when two main Darfuri rebel groups began retaliating against government positions in February 2003, Khartoum's leaders [intensified their campaign]... The Khartoum regime's motives in Darfur soon became clear: Its leaders are not only Islamists but Arabists, who believe blacks-even Muslims-are 'slaves.' " (From WorldMag.com.) Since 2003, Sudanese government forces and ethnic militia called "Janjaweed" have burned and destroyed hundreds of villages, killed and caused the deaths of possibly 200,000 people, and raped and assaulted thousands of women and girls, through humiliation, Arab women are alleged to have sung mocking and insulting songs even as their own men raped black Sudanese women [15]. As of November 2006, approximately two million displaced people live in camps in Darfur and at least 218,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, where they live in refugee camps. In addition to the people displaced by the conflict, at least 1.7 million other people need some form of food assistance because the conflict has destroyed the local economy, markets, and trade in Darfur. [16], figures of the 20 years of genocide in S-Sudan: 2 million deaths, 4 million displaced [17], from the Daily Telegraph March 2009: "More than two million people died during the north-south war between 1983 and 2004". [18]

From 1500 to roughly 1800, most of what is now present-day Sudan was considered the Funj Sultanate of Sinnar. The Funj, an Arabized and Islamicized group, overthrew the Christian Kingdom of Nubia in 1504 and institutionalized Islam as the nationa religion. The Sinnar Sultunate and its sister sultuante in Darfur were well-known, an Arabized and Islamicized group, overthrew the Christian Kingdom of Nubia in 1504 and institutionalized Islam as the nationa religion. The Sinnar Sultunate and its sister sultuante in Darfur were well-known slave-raiding kingdoms, and the Muslim slaver-raiders of Sinnar and Darfur became a dominant regional force. Islam and Arabism were seen as the carriers of civilization, as Amir Idris calls it, and those who were not part of either were subject to subordination, exploitation and enslavement. At the time, agricultural and other "menial" labor was considered socially humiliating. Thus non-Muslim and non-Arab slavers, who did much of that work, were looked down upon and the Arabic-speaking riverain Muslims came to see themselves as culturally superior. it has been argued about Arabism being a product of enslavement." by (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor's [19]) Jennifer Pekkinen [20].

In 'Genocide in Darfur' by (by Samuel Totten, Eric Markusen) pg. 30, it lays out the background that led to the current calamity, racist pan-Arabism by Libya's Arab supremacist legion action for Arab expansion in Chad in 1987, and that: Libya was not orchestrating a simple border raid on a poor country; it was pursuing a new strategy of pan-Arabism, couched in an emotionally charged ideology [21].

The Arabist Islamist regime that fought for Islamo fascism arabism and islamism [22], displaced over 5 million in southern Sudan, Islamist dictator Omar el-Bashir (Al-Bashir) [23] (supported by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who met with him: Nuclear power available for Al-Bashir's Sudan... [24] and by Hezbollah [25] ), was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide by the ICC [26] [27] and faced an arrest warrant [28], yet the Arab League backed this Arabist monster [29] against the genocide charges, [30] which a writer described it: the Arab world in its entirety condemned the warrant and called it racial and colonially motivated. If this ever reflects anything at all, it only shows the world how racist Arabs indeed are. [31] Some hope that locking up Sudan's Al-Bashir could let in some light into the war-torn region where Arab racism seen as the curse of Sudan. This terrible virus is claimed to be most virulent in leaders with varying degrees of dark skin and West-African tribal marks—the Janjaweed. [32]

At the base of both genocides in Sudan, (on Christians in the South and on "fellow" Muslims in Darfur, who are blacks) is the Al Bashir regime's racism. The Arab Gathering, a shadowy Nazi type brotherhood deeply embedded in the Bashir regime, preaches a doctrine of Arab supremacy and a Sudan "cleansed" of non-Arabs. [33], Muammar Qaddafi who wanted to unify all of North Africa under Arab control and had a great deal of money and military power to support the Arabs in the region. Thousands of Libyan troops were sent to north Sudan to fight the South & had stationed troops in Darfur to help the Arabs in Chad, Qaddafi's belief in Arab superiority did a great deal to create hostility between the Arabs and the Africans in Sudan, especially in Darfur. [34]. From an essay 'Unsimplifying Darfur' ... The Chadian side of the story, in a nutshell, involves a warlord named Acyl Ahmed, who, as head of the Armée du Volcan, in the late 1970s and early 80s, was able to mobilize a large number of Chadian Arabs against Hissene Habre's Forces Armées du Nord (FAN). Of all the Trojan horses produced by Colonel Gaddafi's stable Acyl was by far the most faithful. Although Acyl died in 1982, his pro-Arab ideology is still alive and well. For this much of the credit goes to Gaddafi. After suffering a major defeat in northern Chad at the hands of Hissène Habre in 1987 the Libyan leader turned his attention to Darfur. To carve out for himself another sphere of influence and hold aloft the banner of the "Arab Gathering" (Al tajammu al-arabi) -- a "militantly racist and pan-Arabist organization..." [35] [36]

In a more elaborate form, is in the book "Darfur: the ambiguous genocide" (By Gérard Prunier): At an old quarrel between Libya and Chad, another dimension, little noted at the time, was Gaddafi's racism. Part of his hostility to Tombalbaye's regime was due to the fact that the Chadian president was a black African and a Christian and that in his early "revolutionary" days Gaddafi was not only a strident Pan-Arabism but an Arab cultural supremacist as well. So from the beginning, Gaddafi's support for the rebellion acquired a very particular racial tinge where the zurka (a pejorative term used by Arab Bedouins on non-Arab Gourane of Libya, Chad and the Sudan) were suspected of siding with the "imperialists", while the "Arabs" became the very incarnation of "revolutionary" purity. Gadaffi had initially supported the Nimeiry regime in Khartom because he saw is as an "Arab Nationalist Revolutionary Movement" [37] and at a meeting in late 1971 had even offered him a merger of their two countries. He was particularly embittered when Nimeiry turned down his offer and instead negotiated a peace settlement with the black Christian Southerners in 1972. Disappointed in his plans for a peaceful "Arab Union" the Libyan leader then began to arrange for more for more radical means of achieving the same aims, and Darfur loomed large in the subversive plans for Sudan. In 1972 he created the Failaka al-Islamiya (Islamic Legion), which in his mind was to be a tool for the revolutionary unification and arabization of the region. in Darfur proper he supported the creation of the Tajammu al-Arabi (Arab Union), a military racist and pan-Arabist organization which stressed the "Arab" character of the province. The first target of the Failaka al-Islamiya was to be Chad and the second the Sudan. [38]

[edit] Definitions & causes

The Christian Science Monitor 2004 affirms that racism is at root of Sudan's Darfur crisis, that reluctance to call it genocide perpetuates hypocrisy in Afro-Arab relations, Arab militias is the racist, fundamentalist, and undemocratic Sudanese state [39], roughly speaking, the conflict is ethnic, majority is considered inferior by the privileged Arabist minority [40]. president Nimeiry of Sudan, 1969: "Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into the heart of Black Africa, the Arab civilizing mission." [41] [42], the result of Arab racial superiority for ages. [43], an activist: Sudan has a regime that launched a military campaign on an unarmed population for no other reason than that they are not Arab [44], a writer at RaceandHistory.com calls it 'Arab Racism And Imperialism In Sudan' [45], Darfur crisis linked to Arab racism, Slavery [46], and this genocide has been described as an example of Arab racism at its worst [47]. Sudanese decry the "Apology of racism", that some Sudanese people of Arabic origin consider themselves superior than the indigenous Sudanese [48]. Der Spiegel writes about the Janjaweed: Sudan's War within a War - regime that uses tribal conflicts and Arab racism [49].

From 'The Emergence and Impacts of Islamic Radicalists" (Professor. Dr. Girma Yohannes Iyassu Menelik page 36): "The origin of Arab superiority ideology and racism is one of the main causes of the present ethnic cleansing and genocide in Darfur. This can be traced back to 1981, when a Libyan supported Sudanese group al-Tajammu' al-'Arabi (the Arab alliance) distributed pamphlets declaring that 'the Zurga (blacks) had ruled Darfur long enough and that it was time for Arabs to have their turn,' if neccessary by resorting to force, in 2004, under the leadership of Musa Hilal, one of the most powerful leaders of the Janjaweed militias Tajammu' al-'Arabi issued a dfirective that called upon its supporters to change the demographics of Darfur and clean it of its African tribes... since early and mid-1980s; Arabism has become sharper as a racial ideology in Sudan. The Darfur conflict raging since 2003, has given urgency to questions about Arabism, Islam, and race in Sudan. On an everyday level this racism is manifested by Arabs' deragetory term abid (slaves) attached with sexual violence and a series of rude slurs' -- to apply to western and southern." [50]

Scholars agree that Arabism in Darfur is increasingly racial or racist in the sense that it assumes a certain hierarchy of peoples. (From: "Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language" by HJ Sharkey - 2007) [51] (African affairs, Volume 107, Author Royal African Society, Publisher Published for the Royal African Society by the Oxford University Press, 2008, Original from the University of California) [52]

Pundits of Sudan write about "Arab racism, Islamic bigotry and discriminatory practices are the most divisive issues in the Sudan" and its terrible effect, crimes on non-Arab Sudanese [53], the southern backlash to Islamization and Arabization boosted its Christian identity. Southerners now combine indigenous culture, Christianity, and general elements of Western culture to combat Islam and the associated imposition of Arab identity. [54].

[edit] Escalation

The Janjaweed started to become much more aggressive in 2003, after two non-Arab groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms against the Sudanese government, alleging mistreatment by the Arab regime in Khartoum.[55] The Sudanese government has been accused of tampering with evidence, such as attempting to cover up mass graves.[56][57][58] They also arrested and harassed journalists, thus limiting the extent of press coverage of the situation in Darfur.[59][60][61][62]

While the United States government has described the conflict as genocide,[63] the UN has not recognized the conflict as such.[64] On 31 January 2005, the UN released a 176-page report saying that while there were mass murders and rapes of Darfurian civilians, they could not label the atrocities as "genocide" because "genocidal intent appears to be missing".[65][66] Many activists, however, refer to the crisis in Darfur as genocide, including the Save Darfur Coalition, the Aegis Trust and the Genocide Intervention Network. These organizations point to statements by former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, referring to the conflict as genocide. Other activist organizations, such as Amnesty International, while calling for international intervention, avoid the use of the term genocide.

In May 2006 the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, led by Minni Minnawi, signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government. The other faction of the SLM/A, led by Abdul Wahid al Nur, the founding leader of SLM/A, refrained from signing the agreement.

On 31 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new 26,000-troop UN peacekeeping force called UNAMID to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The following day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region.

In March 2007 the UN mission accused Sudan's government of orchestrating and taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there.

On 14 July 2008, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, charges that included three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. On 4 March 2009 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for president al-Bashir, without the genocide charges, claiming they lacked sufficient evidence.[67]

In February 2009, Darfur's UNAMID tried to persuade the rebel group Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese government to sign a peace agreement.[68]

List of abbreviations used in this article

AU: African Union
DLF: Darfur Liberation Front
ICC: International Criminal Court
IDP: Internally Displaced Person
JEM: Justice and Equality Movement
SLM/A/A: Sudan Liberation Movement/Army
SLM/A: Sudan Liberation Movement
SPLA: Sudan People's Liberation Army
UN: United Nations
UNAMID: United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur
UNSC: United Nations Security Council

[edit] Timeline of the conflict

Main article: Timeline of the War in Darfur

[edit] International response

Main article: International response to the Darfur conflict

International attention to the Darfur conflict largely began with reports by the advocacy organizations Amnesty International in July 2003 and the International Crisis Group in December 2003. However, widespread media coverage did not start until the outgoing United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, called Darfur the "world's greatest humanitarian crisis" in March 2004.[69] Organizations such as STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, later under the umbrella of Genocide Intervention Network, and the Save Darfur Coalition emerged and became particularly active in the areas of engaging the United States Congress and President on the issue and pushing for divestment nationwide, initially launched by Adam Sterling under the auspice of the Sudan Divestment Task Force. Particularly strong advocates have additionally included: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Sudan scholar Eric Reeves, Enough Project founder John Prendergast, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, photographers Ryan Spencer Reed, former Marine Brian Steidle, actress Mia Farrow and her son Ronan Farrow, Olympian Joey Cheek, actress Angelina Jolie, actor George Clooney, actor Jonah Hill, Save Darfur Coalition's David Rubenstein, Slovenian humanitarian Tomo Kriznar, and all of those involved with the Genocide Intervention Network. A movement advocating for humanitarian intervention has emerged in several countries.

[edit] United Nations

The report to the UN Human Rights Council said the situation in Darfur is "characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international law".[70] It called for the UN Security Council to take "urgent" action to protect Darfur's civilians, including the deployment of a joint UN/African Union force and the freezing of funds and assets owned by officials complicit in the attacks.[71]

The head of the UN investigating team, the Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams, described the international response to the crisis as "pathetic".

The United States, Britain and the European Union have repeatedly condemned the atrocities but have failed to carry out effective actions to stop the war. The US referred to the killings as genocide in 2004, while in 2006, Tony Blair said the situation was "completely unacceptable" and called for "urgent action".

Attempts to negotiate ceasefires and peace deals have been sporadic and slow. New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson met with President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum in January 2007. Richardson and al-Bashir agreed to a 60-day ceasefire.[72] However, within the week Sudanese planes were again bombing regions in Darfur.

Some 7,000 African Union troops are operating in Darfur but their limited resources and mandate has made it impossible for them to protect civilians.[73] The force's 150 translators are on strike because they have not been paid since November.

Jan Pronk, who was the head of the UN mission in Sudan until he was unceremoniously kicked out of the country by the Khartoum government, said Sudan had realized it could "get away with anything". In 2007, Mr. Pronk wrote on his blog that the Sudanese authorities had continued to "disregard Security Council resolutions, to break international agreements, to violate human rights and to feed and allow attacks on their own citizens. They could do all this without having to fear consequences. On the contrary, the Council and its members and the rest of the international community have been taken for a ride."[74]

The Human Rights Council team faced similar problems. President Bashir promised UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that Sudan would co-operate fully with the inquiry, including granting access to Darfur. But despite more than a dozen attempts by the UN team to apply for visas, Khartoum refused to allow them into the country. Instead they travelled to eastern Chad where more than 230,000 Darfuri refugees have fled. The conflict has followed the refugees over the border, with Chadian Arabs - backed by Sudanese Janjaweed militia - attacking the refugees in Chad.

In early 2007, a High Level Mission on the situation of human rights in Darfur was set up to look into reports of ongoing violations and to try to work with the Government of the Sudan to put a stop to the atrocities. The Mission was led by Nobel Prize Winner Jody Williams and included a number of diplomats and human rights practitioners.[75] The Mission travelled to Ethiopia and Chad but it was never admitted into Sudanese territory itself because the Government refused to issue visas to the Mission. In its report of March 2007, the High Level Mission noted the Sudanese government's abject failure to protect Darfur civilians.[76][77][78]

[edit] International Criminal Court

In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, but without mentioning any specific crimes.[79] Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution.[80]

In April 2007, the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmed Haroun, and a Militia Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.[81] The Sudan Government said that the ICC had no jurisdiction to try Sudanese citizens and that it would not hand the two men over to authorities in the Hague.[82]

On 14 July 2008, The Prosecutor filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's incumbent President Omar al-Bashir, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The Prosecutor has claimed that Mr. al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The Prosecutor is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.[67] Leaders from three Darfur tribes are suing ICC prosecutor Luis-Moreno Ocampo for libel, defamation, and igniting hatred and tribalism.[83]

After an arrest warrant was issued for the Sudanese president in March 2009, the Prosecutor appealed to have the genocide charges added. However, the Pre-Trial Chamber found that there was no reasonable ground to support the contention that he had a specific intent to commit genocide (dolus specialis), which is an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group. The definition adopted by the Pre-Trial Chamber, though unreasonably high as it seems on the face of it, is the definition of the Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute, and some ICTY cases. This definition has recently been reaffirmed and discussed by the International Court of Justice in the Genocide case at some length (Bosnia v. Serbia) and the Pre-Trial Chamber cited the ICJ judgment with approval.

Mr. al-Bashir is now the first incumbent head of state charged with crimes in the Rome Statute.[84] Bashir has rejected the charges and said, "Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes ... will know that all of these things are lies."[85]

It is suspected that al-Bashir would not face trial in The Hague any time soon, as Sudan rejects the ICC's jurisdiction.[67] Payam Akhavan, a professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal and a former war crimes prosecutor, says although he may not go to trial, "He will effectively be in prison within the Sudan itself...Al-Bashir now is not going to be able to leave the Sudan without facing arrest."[86] The Prosecutor has publicly warned that authorities could arrest the President if he enters international airspace. The Sudanese government has announced the Presidential plane will be accompanied by jet fighters.[87] However, the Arab League has announced its solidarity with al-Bashir. Since the warrant, he has visited Qatar and Egypt. Both countries have refused to arrest him. The African Union also condemned the arrest warrant.

Some analysts think that the ICC indictment is counterproductive and harms the peace process. Only days after the ICC indictment, Darfur rebels who were in a peace process with the Sudanese government declared there is no need to engage in a peace agreement because the ICC recognized the Sudanese president as a criminal. Previous ICC indictments, such as the arrest warrants of the LRA leadership in the ongoing war at northern Uganda, were also accused of harming peace processes by criminalizing one side of a war. Some believe that the arrest warrant against al-Bashir will hinder the efforts to establish peace in Darfur, and will undermine any effort to boost stability in Sudan.[88]

[edit] Criticism of international response

The Save Darfur Coalition advocacy group coordinated a large rally in New York, N.Y. in April 2006
Main article: International response to the Darfur conflict

Gérard Prunier, a scholar specializing in African conflicts, argued that the world's most powerful countries have largely limited themselves in expressing concerns and demand for the United Nations to take action in solving the genocide in Darfur. The UN, lacking both the funding and military support of the wealthy countries, has left the African Union to deploy a token force (AMIS) without a mandate to protect civilians. In the lack of foreign political will to address the political and economic structures that underlie the conflict, the international community has defined the Darfur conflict in humanitarian assistance terms and debated the label of "genocide."[69]

On 16 October 2006, Minority Rights Group (MRG) published a critical report, challenging that the UN and the great powers could have prevented the deepening crisis in Darfur and that few lessons appear to have been drawn from their ineptitude during the Rwandan Genocide. MRG's executive director, Mark Lattimer, stated that: "this level of crisis, the killings, rape and displacement could have been foreseen and avoided ... Darfur would just not be in this situation had the UN systems got its act together after Rwanda: their action was too little too late."[89] On 20 October, 120 genocide survivors of The Holocaust, and the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides, backed by six aid agencies, submitted an open letter to the European Union, calling on them to do more to end the atrocities in Darfur, with a UN peacekeeping force as "the only viable option." Aegis Trust director, James Smith, stated that while "the African Union has worked very well in Darfur and done what it could, the rest of the world hasn't supported those efforts the way it should have done with sufficient funds and sufficient equipment."[90]

Human Rights First claimed that over 90% of the light weapons currently being imported by Sudan and used in the conflict are from China;[91] however, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)'s "Arms Transfers Data for 2007", in 2003–2007, Sudan received 87 per cent of its major conventional weapons from Russia and 8 per cent from China.[92] Human rights advocates and opponents of the Sudanese government portray China's role in providing weapons and aircraft as a cynical attempt to obtain oil just as colonial powers once supplied African chieftains with the military means to maintain control as they extracted natural resources.[93][94][95] According to China's critics, China has offered Sudan support threatening to use its veto on the U.N. Security Council to protect Khartoum from sanctions and has been able to water down every resolution on Darfur in order to protect its interests in Sudan.[96] Accusations of the supply of weapons from China, violating the UN arms embargo, continue to arise.[97]

The U.S.-funded Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, which investigates attacks in southern Sudan concluded that "as the Government of Sudan sought to clear the way for oil exploration and to create a cordon sanitaire around the oil fields, vast tracts of the Western Upper Nile Region in southern Sudan became the focus of extensive military operations."[98] However, experts say the Darfur region is unlikely to hold significant oil reserves.[99] Sarah Wykes, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, an NGO that campaigns for better natural resource governance, says: "Sudan has purchased about $100m in arms from China and has used these weapons against civilians in Darfur."[94]

In March 2007, threats of boycotting the Olympic games came from French presidential candidate François Bayrou, in an effort to stop China's support to the Sudanese government in the war.[100] There were also calls for boycotts from actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow,[101] author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves[102] and the Washington Post editorial board.[103][104] Sudan divestment efforts have also concentrated on PetroChina, the national petroleum company with extensive investments in Sudan.[105]

On the opposite side of the issue, publicity given to the Darfur conflict has been criticized in some segments of the Arab media as exaggerated. For example, there have been statements such as: the "lobby to save Darfur ... is just the Israel lobby nicknamed", and by raising the issue of Darfur, the Israeli lobby is trying "to divert attention from Israel's crimes, or the catastrophe of the war in Iraq",[106] and that Western attention to the Darfur crisis is "a cover for what is really being planned and carried out by the Western forces of hegemony and control in our Arab world."[107] Others also argue that "there is no ethnic cleansing being perpetrated" in Darfur, only "great instability" and "clashes between the Sudanese government, rebel movements and the Janjaweed."[108]

In 2007, in a response to allegations that the conflict is between Arabs and Blacks, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir replied:

Talk of Arabs killing Blacks is a lie, the government of Sudan is a government of Blacks, with all different ethnic backgrounds. We’re all Africans. We’re all Black.

[109]

Eight people including U.S. Representatives James McGovern, John Lewis, Donna Edwards, Lynn Woolsey and Keith Ellison were arrested for civil disobedience in April 2009 when they spoke at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness of genocide.

In May 2009 the Mandate Darfur was canceled because the "Sudanese government is obstructing the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan."[110] The Mandate was a conference that would have brought together 300 representatives from different regions of the civil society of Darfur.[110] The conference was planned to be held in Addis Ababa in early May.

One Canadian legal scholar, Omar Ha-Redeye, demonstrated that the crisis in Darfur had significant complicity by the U.N Security Council, the same party that referred the case to the ICC. His position was that foreign government and NGO intervention had an escalating effect on the conflict, and could potentially make it worse, based on previous experiences in Uganda and Congo.[111]

The UN military commander, General Martin Luther Agwai, has declared that the genocide in Darfur is over. He claims there are still small incidents such as, "Banditry, localised issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that." Agwai said these comments a week before he was scheduled to leave Darfur.[1]

On Sept. 10, 2009, a number of Darfur activists came forward in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, saying that reported figures had been deliberately inflated, including evidence used by the ICC. They recanted their previous numbers and made the disclosure in the interest of peace and reconciliation, and in hopes that the ICC would withdraw their warrant. However, SLM/A representatives dispute the claim and legitimacy of these activists.[112]

[edit] Mortality figures

A mother with her sick baby at Abu Shouk IDP camp in North Darfur.

Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians [113] while certain non-governmental organizations, such as the Coalition for International Justice, controversially claim that over 400,000 people have been killed.[114]

In September 2004, the World Health Organization estimated there had been 50,000 deaths in Darfur since the beginning of the conflict, an 18-month period, mostly due to starvation. An updated estimate the following month put the number of deaths for the 6-month period from March to October 2004 due to starvation and disease at 70,000; These figures were criticized, because they only considered short periods and did not include deaths from violence.[115] A more recent British Parliamentary Report has estimated that over 300,000 people have died,[116] and others have estimated even more.

In March 2005, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland estimated that 10,000 were dying each month excluding deaths due to ethnic violence.[117] An estimated 2.7 million people had at that time been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur's major towns.[118] Two hundred thousand had fled to neighboring Chad. Reports of violent deaths compiled by the UN indicate between 6,000 and 7,000 fatalities from 2004 to 2007.[119]

In May 2005, the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the School of Public Health of the Université catholique de Louvain in Brussels, Belgium published an analysis of mortality in Darfur. Their estimate stated that from September 2003 to January 2005, between 98,000 and 181,000 persons had died in Darfur, including from 63,000 to 146,000 excess deaths.[120]

On 28 April 2006, Dr. Eric Reeves argued that "extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000," but this has not been independently verified.[121]

The UN disclosed on 22 April 2008 that it might have underestimated the Darfur death toll by nearly 50%.[9]

Recently, the award-winning journalist, Afshin Rattansi, interviewed two women who returned from Darfur who claimed that they saw no evidence of genocide in Darfur. Collette Valentine, a TV producer visiting from the United Kingdom, and Ali Gunn, a British media consultant, attended the first “International Conference on the Challenge Facing Women in Darfur” in Al-Fasher in the north. Valentine said articles about Darfur in the international press make her feel as if she visited a completely different region, a completely different country.[122]

In July 2009, the Christian Science Monitor published an op-ed stating that many of the published mortality rates have been misleading because they include a large number of people who have died of disease and malnutrition, as well as those who have died from direct violence. Therefore, when activist groups make statements indicating that "four hundred thousand people have been killed," they are misleading the public.[123]

In January 2010, The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters published an article in a special issue of The Lancet. The article, entitled Patterns of mortality rates in Darfur Conflict, estimated the excess number of deaths to be 298 271 (95% CI 178 258—461 520), with 80% of these due to diseases [124].

51 International peacekeepers have been killed in Darfur.

[edit] Spreading of violence

Main articles: Civil war in Chad (2005–present) and Central African Republic Bush War

Violence in Darfur spread over the border to eastern Chad and the Central African Republic. In Chad, notably, the Janjaweed were accused of incursions and attackers. Hundreds of aid workers in Chad have already been evacuated due to increased tension between rebel groups and military forces. Meanwhile, the Janjaweed have ventured deep into Chad to conduct assaults, resulting in the fleeing of nearly 100,000 Chadians.[125]

[edit] See also

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[edit] References

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  3. ^ Sudan, Darfur rebel group reach landmark deal
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[edit] External links

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