U.N. Officials Turn Focus to Sudan’s South - NYTimes.com

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By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

UNITED NATIONS — As the fighting in Darfur diminishes after years of conflict, senior United Nations officials say they are focused increasingly on the deteriorating situation in another part of Sudan: the south.

The shift in alarm has been building for months, but was reinforced late Wednesday when Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the departing commander of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, told reporters that the war in Darfur was essentially over.

“As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Militarily, there is not much. What you have is security issues more now. Banditry, localized 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.”

Senior United Nations officials said that while General Agwai was basically correct, they did not want to play down the dire consequences some three million displaced people face in Darfur. Still, they noted, the escalating skirmishes in the south could reignite the civil war there, which in years past proved far more deadly than the conflict in Darfur.

“Whether it is characterized as a war or not, the reality is that threats against civilians do remain” in Darfur, said Edmond Mulet, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping. Though the level of fighting has diminished there, he said, an additional 140,000 people have sought refuge in camps since January. “It is still far from peaceful,” he said.

Factors contributing to the diminished fighting include a splintering of opposition groups and reduced outside support, officials said. Most current deaths in Darfur come from criminal activity, United Nations officials said, while hundreds of people have been killed in recent months in clashes in the south.

The peace agreement between Khartoum and southern rebels signed in 2005 ended more than 20 years of fighting that killed some two million people. Since then, fighting has renewed along the possible border between north and south, an area rich in oil, as the 2011 deadline approaches for a referendum on southern independence.

The Obama administration has been publicly divided over how to characterize the Darfur conflict.

Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, has continued to call the conflict in Darfur genocide, and officials said she upbraided Rodolphe Adada, the departing civilian head of the peacekeeping forces, after he described Darfur as a “low-intensity conflict” this year.

Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, “While the nature of the violence in Darfur may have changed, the crisis over all remains serious and unresolved.”

Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, a retired Air Force officer who is President Obama’s special envoy for Sudan, has described the situation in Darfur as the “remnants of genocide.” He issued a statement Thursday saying he was focused on “ensuring that any government-backed militias are disarmed, displaced persons can ultimately return to their homes, and the people of Darfur who have suffered so much can live in peace and security.”

Mr. Adada resigned after sustained criticism that he was too soft on the Khartoum government. General Agwai is rotating out, to be succeeded by another officer. Some United Nations officials and Darfur activists called it self-serving of the departing peacekeeping leaders to describe the conflict as settled.

“It undermines international urgency in resolving these problems if people are led to believe that the war in Darfur is over,” said John Prendergast, a founder of the Enough Project, an anti-genocide campaign.

The United Nations has long been criticized for failing to fulfill its mandate for some 26,000 peacekeepers in Darfur. It currently has 18,462 uniformed troops there, and predicts a 95 percent deployment by the end of the year, said Nick Birnback, the spokesman for peacekeeping operations.

Leader of Darfur Peacekeeping Mission Resigns

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) — The head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region, who some diplomats say has been ineffective, is stepping down, United Nations officials said Tuesday.

Officials from the United Nations are working closely with the African Union to find a replacement for the head of the peacekeeping mission, Rodolphe Adada, who is a former foreign minister of Congo, said Marie Okabe, a United Nations spokeswoman.

The peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as Unamid, said in a statement that Mr. Adada’s resignation would take effect on Monday. Diplomats said he was expected to return to politics in Congo.

Gen. Henry Anyidoho of Ghana, deputy chief of the peacekeeping force, will be in charge until a permanent replacement for Mr. Adada is named, United Nations officials said.

The conflict in Darfur in western Sudan has been going on for more than six years. The United Nations says that as many as 300,000 people have died, while Sudan’s government has placed the official toll at 10,000. About 4.7 million people in Darfur rely on international aid to survive, according to the United Nations.

The peacekeeping force was established by a Security Council resolution in July 2007, but deployment of the peacekeeping troops has been slow and difficult.

At the end of June, about 60 percent of Unamid’s planned full strength of 26,000 troops and police officers had arrived in Darfur, an area roughly the size of France. The United Nations says it hopes that 90 percent of the troops will be on the ground by the end of the year.

The slow pace of deployment has frustrated the United Nations, its member states and aid workers. Diplomats and activists have also complained that the United Nations has done too little to revive the stalled Darfur peace effort.

John Prendergast, a former State Department official and co-founder of the Enough Project, an antigenocide group, said the peacekeeping force had been widely perceived as a failure.

“There is an urgent need to construct a more credible and effective peace process backed by stronger leverage,” he said.