Sudanese Register For First Free Vote In 24 Years - NYTimes.com

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KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese began registering on Sunday for the country's first multi-party elections in 24 years, but opposition parties threatened to boycott the April poll unless democratic reforms are passed.

U.S. envoy Scott Gration, on his first visit since Washington unveiled a new policy of engagement with Sudan last month, said time was running short and urged Sudan's political parties to resolve their differences ahead of the key vote.

Opposition parties and Sudan junior government partner, the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), have threatened to boycott the election unless new laws ensuring democratic transformation are passed, including reforming the powerful intelligence services.

"We need to get some solutions," Gration said in Juba, south Sudan. "We urge you to register to vote, to express your will, to do this in peace and for peace."

Opposition parties said they were carefully monitoring the registration Sunday, though they said many people had no idea the electoral process had started or where the centres were.

"The National Elections Commission (NEC) has made no effort to tell the people that it is time to register," said one Communist Party delegate.

An average of about 150 people had registered in each of six Khartoum centres visited by Reuters Sunday.

Election officers said they had asked for larger posters to advertise registration so people would know where to come.

"There has been a very active campaign ... there was information on the radio, TV and newspapers," NEC Secretary-General Jalal Mohamed Ahmed told Reuters.

Sudan's mobile providers sent subscribers a message that registration was beginning.

And indeed some Sudanese, bussed in by their political parties or nipping out on their lunch break, did get the message and came to collect their piece of white paper which will allow them to vote in April.

But while awareness in Khartoum was limited, outside the capital there was confusion.

In south Sudan's capital Juba, centres opened late and officials worried tribal violence which has displaced thousands would mean many would not be able to register.

"The law does not allow them to register in one place and vote in another," said Mac Maika, a south Sudan elections official.

Early Sunday, 10 people were killed in violence near Malakal town, central Sudan, the southern army said.

Sudan's NEC will also have to register more than 2 million Darfuris forced into miserable camps in Sudan's west after a rebellion in 2003 and negotiate access to areas controlled by hostile rebel groups.

"It's not going to be easy.. but I am cautiously optimistic," said voter Mohamed Osman.

(Additional reporting by Skye Wheeler in Juba)

BBC - Africa backs Darfur crimes court

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African leaders have agreed to establish a new court to bring justice to the Sudanese region of Darfur.

The hybrid court would consist of Sudanese and foreign judges appointed by the African Union in consultation with the Khartoum government.

US-based Human Rights Watch told the BBC the new court should not replace the International Criminal Court.

The ICC is seeking to prosecute Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for committing war crimes in Darfur, which he denies.

A rebel leader is currently on trial in The Hague and the court has also issued arrest warrants for a Sudanese minister and pro-government militia leader.

DARFUR CONFLICT

300,000 died, 2.7 million homeless

Black African rebels say they face discrimination

Government denies mobilising Arab militias

Violence flared in Darfur in 2003 when black African rebel groups took up arms against the government in Khartoum, complaining of discrimination and neglect.

Pro-government Arab militias then started a campaign of violence, targeting the black African population.

The UN says some 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur's six-year conflict. Khartoum says about 10,000 died.

Speed

The African leaders, meeting in the Nigerian capital Abuja, agreed to the proposals in a report put forward by South Africa's former President Thabo Mbeki.

Thabo Mbeki himself is asked to head a new implementation panel. This will have an enormous remit, not only helping bring into force the former South African president's own proposals, but also helping Sudan's troubled north-south peace process.

Elections are planned for April next year, to be followed by a referendum on independence the year after. The timetable is tight and much needs to be done.

To strengthen Mr Mbeki's hand there are now suggestions that he will in due course take over as the joint African Union-United Nations mediator in Darfur and the north-south process. This would be an enormous task, but Mr Mbeki is a man of keen intelligence and great patience - skills he will need if he is to succeed.

Mr Bashir was invited to the meeting, but after an angry reaction from human rights groups, he stayed away.

The BBC's Africa analyst Martin Plaut says Mr Mbeki's 148-page report is written in diplomatic language, but makes clear that previous attempts to dispense justice in Darfur have made little progress.

Neither the special courts established by the Sudanese government nor the ICC warrant are considered to have contributed to peace.

Human Rights Watch's Georgette Gaignon told the BBC's Network Africa the organisation welcomed the proposal.

"It's part of the whole package of providing justice to victims in Darfur," she said.

"There are many who have suffered in Darfur and there are many alleged criminals.

"These people should be tried in a domestic system that conforms to fair trial standards, but the most serious cases are now before the International Criminal Court and those should be dealt with there."

She added that it was important that the court was set up as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But the response from the Sudanese participants in the Darfur civil war has been less than enthusiastic.

Sudan's Vice-President Ali Osman Taha, who was at the Abuja meeting, said the proposals needed closer scrutiny to see whether they were in line with the constitution.

One rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, described Mr Mbeki proposals as impractical, but did not reject them outright.

North-south conflict to be emphasis of new U.S. policy on Sudan - washingtonpost.com

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Focus on restoring accord seen as helping resolve Darfur situation

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Obama administration's new policy toward Sudan, formally announced Monday, turns the spotlight back on where the troubled nation's problems first began: the split between the Islamic north and the largely animist and Christian south.

Although the world's attention has been focused on the tragedy in the Darfur region of western Sudan, administration officials argued Monday that a faltering peace accord that ended Africa's longest-running conflict is under increasing strain and needs to be repaired. If that deal -- brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 -- collapses, officials and analysts say, then hope will be lost for a solution to Darfur. The two-decade conflict between north and south led to the deaths of 2 million people.

Alex de Waal, a Sudan analyst with the Social Science Research Council, said the emphasis on the north-south conflict is significant.

"What this document is saying is, it was a mistake to lose that focus [on the peace agreement]. And we must get our priorities right," he said. "Darfur is part of Sudan, and if the rest of Sudan falls apart, you're never going to solve Darfur."

Still, many analysts think the Darfur conflict spiraled out of control in 2003 because the United States was so focused on resolving the north-south civil war that it ignored signs that the government in Khartoum was secretly behind brutal clashes in Darfur that ultimately led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people. Now the Obama administration hopes to avoid making the same mistake.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters under ground rules of anonymity, said that "for quite some time, policy has been understandably focused on the urgent crisis in Darfur, and [north-south peace agreement] implementation fell behind."

The official added: "We're dealing with a different timeline in this administration. There are a set of fundamentally different dynamics that have to be addressed in a very short period of time."

During last year's presidential campaign, Obama campaigned on the promise of getting tough with the Sudanese government, particularly over Darfur. But activists and lawmakers complained that his administration has offered conflicting signals in recent months. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a policy that will feature rewards and punishments for Sudanese leaders based on whether they meet benchmarks in three areas: Darfur, the north-south agreement and counterterrorism.

The policy appeared less accommodating toward the Sudanese government than the approach suggested by the U.S. envoy, retired Air Force Major Gen. J. Scott Gration, who has pushed for normalizing relations. However, the new strategy adopted his emphasis on the north-south agreement and on engaging, rather than isolating, the government, analysts said. The policy document also emphasized that Gration will play the "leading role in pursuing our Sudan strategy," despite calls from some humanitarian groups for his replacement.

The 2005 peace agreement gave southerners religious and political autonomy and a role in a unity government until 2011, when a referendum is supposed to be held in the south on whether it will secede. The accord also called for national elections next year.

But activists and officials say the Sudanese government, loath to lose the oil-rich south, has dragged its feet on preparations for the votes. Inter-tribal fighting has increased in the south, and some observers say it is abetted by the government.

Among the benchmarks Sudan will be expected to achieve are progress on election preparations, passage of a law to hold the 2011 referendum and finalizing the boundary between north and south, officials said.

Officials did not describe the punishments or rewards in store for Sudan, saying they were in a classified document. But Sudan has been seeking normalization of relations with the U.S. government, an end to economic sanctions and removal from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Officials said the U.S. government will continue to refuse to deal with Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court in the Darfur killings. Instead, it has held talks with one of his senior advisers and other officials in his government.

U.S. officials emphasized that Sudan would not be rewarded if it simply made progress in one area, such as counterterrorism, but would have to show advances across the board.

The policy got a positive reception from many Sudan advocates and members of Congress.

"We now have a Sudan-wide policy . . . instead of shifting back and forth and allowing Khartoum to play the south off against Darfur," said John Prendergast, head of the Enough anti-genocide project at the Center for American Progress.

The emphasis on the north-south agreement "is very important, because the south was beginning to feel abandoned," said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a leading force in Congress on Sudan.

Even the Khartoum government seemed relieved to see a policy in place, although some of its officials criticized the continued emphasis on sanctions.

"We hope that this will end the debate among U.S. officials, and we hope that now they will think with one mind and speak with one tongue," Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani, a senior adviser to the Sudanese government, told Sudanese television, according to the Associated Press.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Darfur Advocates, Rep. Wolf Intensify Pressure on Obama - washingtonpost.com

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By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 2009

Human rights groups and lawmakers are ratcheting up pressure on the Obama administration this week over its approach to ending violence in Sudan, saying the White House and the State Department are treading too cautiously in dealing with the government in Khartoum.

A coalition of U.S.-based advocates focused on the Darfur region -- where they say genocide is still being committed by the Sudanese government -- sent a letter to President Obama on Monday demanding the replacement of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration as special envoy to Sudan, arguing that his attempt to engage with the country's rulers "is wrong and deadly."

"The good-intentioned yet soft approach of the General towards the Government of Sudan is abused and exploited by a regime that has continued to rule Sudan with fire and blood throughout the last twenty years," read the letter from nine groups, including the Darfur Reconciliation and Development Organization, and several individuals.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in response, "The President is extremely grateful for the work General Gration has done thus far, and for all the work he'll do on this critical issue in the future."

In a separate letter to be released Thursday, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), a member of the House Sudan caucus who has long been critical of the Khartoum regime, calls on Obama to personally intervene to ensure that no U.S. lobbying firm is allowed to represent the country. The Washington Post reported last week that Robert B. Crowe, a fundraiser for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), is attempting to secure U.S. approval for a lobbying contract with Khartoum.

"I urge you to personally engage on the issue of Sudan," Wolf writes to Obama. "You've rightly noted that 'silence, acquiescence and paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong,' and you've advocated for 'real pressures [to] be placed on the Sudanese government.' I wholeheartedly support these sentiments, but sentiments absent action ring hollow."

The sharply worded criticisms come as the Obama administration prepares to release a long-awaited policy on Sudan, which has been torn apart by a two-decade civil war and by government-backed massacres in the western region of Darfur that have killed more than 300,000 people and displaced millions.

Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Darfur. His government has embarked on an effort this year to persuade the United States to ease sanctions against Sudan, seeking to hire a lobbyist and helping to negotiate a $1.3 million consulting contract between Qatar and former Reagan aide Robert "Bud" McFarlane, records show.

The letters to Obama this week are the latest in a series of demands for a harder U.S. line on Khartoum. Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of semiautonomous southern Sudan, wrote to Obama last month, saying that Bashir continues to foment violence in the region, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Post.

"There has not been any transformation or reform at the center," Mayardit wrote, referring to Khartoum. "The status quo prevails. . . . Significant change in policy in relation to Sudan should only come when there is change in the reality of Sudan."

Sudan: End Rights Abuses, Repression - Human Rights Watch

Envoys, UN, AU Should Press Ruling Party for Nationwide Reforms

October 6, 2009

Ongoing violence in Darfur continues to kill, injure, and displace people. Some 200,000 Darfuris live in camps such as this one in eastern Chad, while 2.7 million Darfuris live in displaced person camps inside Darfur.

Alvaro Ybarra Zavala/ Getty Images

Related Materials:

The Way Forward

Related Features:

Failing Darfur

Sudan is at a crossroads. It can either make good on its promises or allow the situation to deteriorate further with its repressive practices.

Georgette Gagnon, Africa director

(New York) - The Sudanese government should end attacks by its armed forces on civilians in Darfur and make the major human rights reforms envisioned in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Special Envoys to Sudan, concerned governments, and United Nations and African Union officials meeting in Moscow today should press Sudan's government to make these legal and policy changes a matter of urgent priority, Human Rights Watch said.

The 25-page report, "The Way Forward: Ending Human Rights Abuses and Repression across Sudan" documents human rights violations and repression in Khartoum and northern states, ongoing violence in Darfur, and the fighting that threatens civilians in Southern Sudan. It is based on field research in eastern Chad and Southern Sudan in July and August.

"Sudan is at a crossroads," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "It can either make good on its promises or allow the situation to deteriorate further with its repressive practices."

Today's meeting of concerned governments and intergovernmental bodies in Moscow including the UN, AU and League of Arab States comes at a critical time in Sudan. The National Congress Party (NCP)-led Government of National Unity (GNU) is facing an interlocking mosaic of human rights and political challenges in the coming months.

Darfur peace talks, which have faltered in recent months, are set to resume this month in Doha. Under the terms of the 2005 CPA, national elections are scheduled for April 2010 and a southern referendum on independence for January 2011. Sudan's failure in any of these processes can undermine its overall progress.

"Those who care about the Sudanese people should put human rights first, through strong, comprehensive and coordinated pressure on the governing party to change its ways in the South, on Darfur and in Khartoum," said Gagnon.

The government should immediately end attacks on civilians in Darfur, charge or release people it has arrested arbitrarily, and end harassment of civil society activists, said Human Rights Watch. It should prioritize provisions of the CPA that have clear human rights and security implications, Human Rights Watch said. These include genuine reform of its national security apparatus, North-South border demarcation, and security agreements to withdraw and downsize troops and integrate former militias.

Arbitrary Arrests

Sudanese national security officials, acting under the sweeping powers of the National Security Forces Act (NSFA), have been arresting and detaining civil society activists, opposition leaders, and suspected rebels in Khartoum, Port Sudan, Kassala, Darfur and elsewhere, often for prolonged periods and without access to family or lawyers, Human Rights Watch research indicated. For example, at least seven Darfuri students who are members of the United Popular Front (UPF) have been in detention since April 2009. Their group held events at several Sudanese universities supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC), which on March 4 issued an indictment against Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir.

On October 1, security officers arrested two more members of the student group in Gazeera state following a university debate on Darfur. Government security forces have also harassed and arrested activists from Kassala in eastern Sudan and political opposition party members in Khartoum and Southern Kordofan.

On August 28, security officers arrested another Darfuri activist, Abdelmajeed Saleh Abaker Haroun, in downtown Khartoum and they continue to detain him without charge.

"The Sudanese government should end its practice of arbitrary arrests, release or charge people it has detained without legal basis, and it should genuinely reform national security laws," said Gagnon.

Harassment of Civil Society and Suppression of Information

The full extent of human rights violations in the northern states and in Darfur is unknown because of government censorship of the media. Its closure of three Sudanese human rights organizations following the ICC indictment further restricted the flow of information about human rights across Sudan. The expulsion of 13 international humanitarian organizations from Darfur around the same time has also restricted the flow of information about humanitarian needs.

The policy of pre-print censorship, which Human Rights Watch has documented, continued with security officers operating under the Security Forces Act censoring and suspending newspapers and blocking civil society activities, particularly on elections, while preparations are beginning for the April 2010 elections.

Human Rights Watch has found that on at least six occasions in the last four months, security and humanitarian authorities interrupted or prevented civil society groups and political parties from holding talks about elections in Khartoum, Port Sudan, Medani and elsewhere in northern states and Darfur. In one case, security officials detained and questioned members of the Communist party for distributing leaflets in Khartoum.

"By repressing civil society groups and political parties, the Sudanese government is restricting fundamental political freedoms at the time they are most important," Gagnon said.

Between January and June, security officials prevented publication of newspapers on at least 10 occasions through heavy censorship, harassed or arrested journalists and the author of a book on Darfur, and shut down an organization that was training and supporting journalists. In September, government censorship caused suspension of at least two major papers.

President Bashir announced on September 29 that his government would stop pre-print censorship, but also warned journalists not to exceed established "red lines." It remains to be seen whether this statement will translate into greater freedom of expression on critical matters of public interest.

Ongoing Clashes in Darfur

In Darfur, recent clashes between the governing party-led Sudan Armed Forces and rebels in September and the use of indiscriminate bombings demonstrate that the war is not over. Government air and ground attacks on villages around Korma North Darfur on September 17 and 18 reportedly killed 16 civilians, including women, and burned several villages.

Witnesses from the North Darfur town of Um Baru told Human Rights Watch that government bombing in May hit water pumps and killed and injured scores of civilians.

"They were dropping 12 bombs a day," one witness told Human Rights Watch. "They dropped in all the areas around the town."

Clashes between government and JEM rebels at Muhajariya, South Darfur, in February included an intensive government bombing campaign that killed scores of civilians and displaced 40,000. An estimated 2.7 million people in displaced persons camps in Darfur and 200,000 in Chad are unable to return to their villages for fear of the attacks and violence, including sexual violence, by government soldiers and government-allied militia.

Insecurity in Southern Sudan

In Abyei and other flashpoints along the North-South border, the GNU's failure to implement the peace agreement provisions on border demarcation and troop withdrawal and downsizing threatens to expose civilians to further abuse and danger. Both armies have failed to downsize and to integrate former militias fully, as required by the security arrangements in the peace agreement.

During the February clashes in Malakal between the northern government forces and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army soldiers, former militias whom the armed forces failed to integrate instigated violence and human rights violations. The presidency has still not taken sufficient action to remove NCP-backed former militias from the area and reduce the threat of further violence.

Elsewhere in Southern Sudan, intense inter-ethnic fighting killed at least 1,200 civilians in the first half of 2009. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-led Government of Southern Sudan has so far been unable to protect civilians from the civilian-on-civilian fighting, or from a steady stream of attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army operating in Central and Western Equatoria since September 2008.

"The people of Southern Sudan have borne the brunt of the intense inter-ethnic fighting, rebel attacks and clashes between the northern and southern armies," Gagnon said.

Both the southern government and the national government need to do more to prevent the violence and protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Mission in Sudan peacekeeping mission should also increase efforts to prevent violence and protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said.

U.S. Faces Doubts About Leadership on Human Rights - washingtonpost.com

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By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 -- From the beginning, the Obama administration has unabashedly embraced the United Nations, pursuing a diplomatic strategy that reflects a belief that the world's sole superpower can no longer afford to go it alone. But, as the U.N. General Assembly gets underway this week, human rights activists and political analysts say the new approach has undercut U.S. leadership on human rights issues.

Rights advocates have been frustrated by several episodes. They say U.S. diplomats have sent mixed messages about their intention to reward -- or punish -- the Sudanese government for its alleged role in genocide in Darfur. The United States rejected a U.N. proposal to compel Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations into war crimes in the Gaza Strip. And the administration has pursued a low-profile approach to Sri Lanka, where a military offensive against rebels is believed to have killed thousands of civilians.

The administration continues to assert that "the United States is not going to preach its values and not going to impose its values," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The problem is they are not American values -- they are international values."

U.S. officials assert they have shown leadership on human rights, citing the administration's decision to weigh prosecutions of CIA interrogators. They note that the administration joined the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing the Bush administration's policy of shunning the troubled rights agency in the hopes of reforming it. A U.S. vote on the Security Council in June was crucial in ensuring continued U.N. scrutiny of Sudan's rights record.

Being a Team Player

But U.S. officials say that American credibility also lies in their willingness to be team players. In the past several months, the United States has pledged to sign U.N. arms control and human rights treaties, and has committed to sending U.S. officers to far-flung U.N. peacekeeping missions. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says cooperation with the global organization is essential for coordinating international efforts to combat terrorism, scrap nuclear weapons arsenals and fight pandemics.

"No single country, even one as powerful as our own, can deal with these challenges in isolation," Rice said. "We are fundamentally living in an era when our security and our well-being are very much linked to the security and well-being of people elsewhere. That's a simple recognition of reality."

John R. Bolton, one of the U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said the Obama administration's strategy at the United Nations resembles a religious "act of faith." He questioned the wisdom of empowering the organization.

The United Nations' contribution to the "great questions of our time" -- counterterrorism and nonproliferation -- have been only "marginally effective," Bolton said.

He also has criticized U.S. support for the Human Rights Council, a body that "spends its time attacking Israel and the United States."

In April, the council, based in Geneva, called for an investigation into alleged abuses during the war in Gaza last winter. Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who headed the probe, insisted on expanding the investigation to examine abuses by Hamas and other Palestinian militants. His report accused both sides of committing war crimes and called on the Security Council to compel Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations.

Human rights advocates urged the United States to back Goldstone, saying it would show that the United States is willing to hold even its closest ally to account for abuses. But Rice rejected his recommendations, saying the "weight of the report is something like 85 percent oriented towards very specific and harsh condemnation and conclusions related to Israel. . . . In that regard it remains unbalanced, although obviously less so than it might have been."

Troubled About Darfur

Jerry Fowler, executive director of the Save Darfur Coalition, said the administration's approach to Darfur has been troubling. In recent months, Obama's special envoy, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, has pursued a more conciliatory approach toward Sudan, saying that genocide was no longer taking place in Darfur and that it was time to ease some sanctions.

"We have been pushing consistently for a balance of incentives and pressures, and so far we haven't really seen that balance," Fowler said. "Publicly, there has been more of an emphasis on incentives."

Rice said Gration's "vitally important" efforts to pursue a political settlement to crises in Sudan should not be interpreted to mean "that we are any less concerned" about Sudan's commission of atrocities "or that we are prepared to wield carrots in advance of concerted and very significant steps on the ground. That's not the policy of the United States."

Silence on Sri Lanka?

The other major concern of human rights advocates monitoring developments at the United Nations is Sri Lanka.

When the government launched its final offensive this year against the country's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), it was Mexico and Austria that first raised the alarm in the Security Council. France and Britain sent their foreign ministers to the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, to press the government to show restraint.

The United States supported those efforts to draw attention to the crisis in the Security Council, which China and Russia opposed. It backed a compromise that allowed for discussion on the Sri Lanka conflict in the U.N. basement.

"The U.S. government remained relatively silent on the Sri Lankan crisis, especially in the early stages of the fighting," said Fabienne Hara, vice president for multilateral affairs at the International Crisis Group. Its response to Sri Lanka "did not seem to match the commitment to preventing mass human rights abuses stated during the presidential campaign," she said.

Rice challenged that assessment, saying "my perception is that we spoke out very forcefully."She said that the United States had a strong ambassador on the ground in Sri Lanka, conveying American concerns, and that the assistant secretary of state for refugees traveled there to conduct an assessment mission. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rice said, had been personally focused on the issue.

"I think that is an instance where our stand was clear, consistent and principled," she said.

BBC - Sudan's Darfur hit by new clashes

Image by Genocide Intervention Network via Flickr

Sudanese soldiers have been fighting with rebels in the Darfur region in recent days, the army has confirmed.

The clashes, in Korma in northern Darfur, were the first major battles since a UN commander said last month that the region was no longer at war.

The joint African Union-United Nations force Unamid is investigating.

Sudanese officials say 10,000 people have died since the conflict broke out in 2003. The UN says 300,000 have died and 2.7 million have been displaced.

From 2003 to 2005, when the conflict was at its height, aid agencies labelled the situation in Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Rebels 'purged'

A faction of the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said the latest clashes broke out on Thursday and continued into Friday.

The group said 20 civilians were killed during the fighting.

In a statement, the Sudanese military confirmed the clashes but said nothing about casualties.

DISPLACED IN DARFUR

2006 547,420 people fled their homes

2007 302,794

2008 317,000

2009 (first six months) 137,000

Total to date: 2.7m Source: UN humanitarian agency Ocha

The statement said only that government forces had "purged the areas of the remnants" of the SLA.

None of the claims have yet been independently verified.

Unamid said it was planning to send an investigation team to the area.

"We are waiting to sent an urgent mission there to verify and assess the security and humanitarian situation," said spokesman Nourredine Mezni.

The clashes are the first of any note since Unamid's outgoing military commander Gen Martin Agwai said the war in Darfur was effectively over.

The Nigerian officer characterised the violence in Sudan's Western province as closer to criminality than an outright war.

Next month peace talks on Darfur will continue in the Qatari capital Doha.

But the BBC's James Copnall in Sudan says Abdel Wahid Mohamed el-Nur, leader of the SLA faction involved in the recent clashes, has made it clear he is very unlikely to attend.

On Sunday President Omar al-Bashir appealed to all the armed movements in Darfur to join the talks.

He called on "the remaining sons of Darfur who took up arms against the government" to stop fighting and join the peace process.

The war broke out in the arid and impoverished region early in 2003 when rebel groups attacked government targets, accusing Khartoum of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs.

Pro-government militiamen hit back with brutal force, which the US and some rights groups have labelled genocide.

Khartoum denies supporting the militias, but the international court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant earlier this year for Mr Bashir, accusing him of war crimes.

Sudan Court to Define Indecent Dress for Women - NYTimes.com

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — This is not about pants, Lubna Hussein insists. It is about principles.

A woman should be able to wear what she wants and not be publicly whipped for it, says Mrs. Hussein, a defiant Sudanese journalist, and on Monday her belief will be put to the test.

Mrs. Hussein has been charged in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, with indecent dress, a crime that carries a $100 fine and 40 lashings. She was arrested in July, along with 12 other women, who were caught at a cafe wearing trousers.

Sudan is partially ruled by Islamic law, which emphasizes modest dress for women. Mrs. Hussein, 34, has pleaded not guilty and is daring the Sudanese authorities to punish her.

“I am Muslim; I understand Muslim law,” Mrs. Hussein said in an interview. “But I ask: what passage in the Koran says women can’t wear pants? This is not nice.”

Mrs. Hussein even printed up invitation cards for her initial court date in July and sent out e-mail messages asking people to witness her whipping, if it came to that. She said she wanted the world to see how Sudan treated women.

Hundreds of Sudanese women — many wearing pants — swarmed in front of the court where the trial was supposed to take place, protesting that the law was unfair. Twice now, the trial has been postponed. Some of the other women arrested with Mrs. Hussein have pleaded guilty and were lashed as a result. Past floggings have been carried out with plastic whips that leave permanent scars.

“The flogging, yes, it causes pain,” Mrs. Hussein said. “But more important, it is an insult. This is why I want to change the law.”

The law in contention here is Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code. Concisely stated, the law says that up to 40 lashes and a fine should be assessed anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing.”

The question is: what exactly is indecent clothing?

In Sudan, some women wear veils and loose fitting dresses; others do not. Northern Sudanese, who are mostly Muslim, are supposed to obey Islamic law, while southern Sudanese, who are mostly Christian, are not. Mrs. Hussein argues that Article 152 is intentionally vague, in part to punish women.

Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman, said the law was meant for the opposite reason, to “protect the people.”

“We have an act controlling the behavior of women and men so the behavior doesn’t harm others, whether it’s speech or dress or et cetera,” he said.

But, he insisted, Mrs. Hussein must have done something else to run afoul of the authorities, besides wearing pants.

“You come to Khartoum and you will see for yourself,” he said. “Many women, in offices and wedding ceremonies, wear trousers.”

“Thousands of girls wear the trousers,” he added.

Asked what other offenses Mrs. Hussein may have committed, Mr. Atti said that the case file was secret and that he did not know.

Mrs. Hussein countered that she did not do anything else that might have violated the law, and that countless people from inside and outside Sudan are supporting her.

“It’s well known that Sudanese women are pioneers in the history of women’s rights in this region, and that we won our rights a long time ago because of our awareness, open mind, good culture and struggle,” she said.

The last time Sudan’s courts handled a case that attracted such international attention, they found a compromise solution. A British schoolteacher faced up to 40 lashes and six months in prison for allowing her students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, which was perceived as an insult to Islam. But after being sentenced to 15 days in jail, she was soon pardoned by the Sudanese president.

A widow with no children, Mrs. Hussein is a career journalist who recently worked as a public information assistant for the United Nations in Sudan. She quit, she said, because she did not want to get the United Nations embroiled in her case. But Sudan, given its renewed interest in normalizing relations with the United States, might be reluctant to draw much international ire by harshly punishing her.

Protesters are expected to come out on her behalf again when Mrs. Hussein returns to court Monday morning. She says her family is also behind her.

“My mother supports me,” she said, “but she is worried for me and prays for me.”

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Tribesmen Attack a Village in Southern Sudan, Killing 20 - NYTimes.com

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JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) — Tribesmen killed 20 people, including a chief and his family, in an attack on a south Sudan village in the latest violence in the oil-producing territory, the southern Sudanese military said Saturday.

A southern army spokesman accused Sudan’s former foreign minister, Lam Akol, now the leader of a breakaway political party, of arming the attackers from his Shilluk tribe. Mr. Akol dismissed the accusation.

The Shilluk tribesmen attacked the village of Bony-Thiang in Upper Nile State on Friday morning, killing civilians of the Dinka tribe, the army said.

Dinka fighters mounted a retaliatory attack on the nearby Shilluk village of Buol on Saturday morning, killing at least five people, said the army spokesman, Kuol Diem Kuol.

Rival tribes from Sudan’s underdeveloped south have clashed for years in disputes often caused by cattle rustling and long-running feuds, but violence has soared this year.

The United Nations said the attacks could mar preparations for Sudan’s first multiparty elections in 20 years, scheduled for April 2010. They could also affect the security of oil installations.

Southern politicians accuse north Sudan’s dominant party, the National Congress Party, of trying to destabilize the south by provoking and arming rival tribes.

Sudan’s mostly Christian south fought the Muslim north in a two-decade civil war that ended in a 2005 peace accord. The deal created a semiautonomous southern government, allowed the south to keep an army and promised elections, followed by a referendum on southern independence in 2011.

Kuol Diem Kuol, the southern army spokesman, accused the north of conspiring with Lam Akol to arm the Shilluk attackers and encourage them to take revenge for past Dinka raids.

The attackers killed the Dinka chief Thon Wai, his two wives and three children, and burned down Bony-Thiang, he said.

Mr. Akol dismissed the accusations of his involvement as “absolute nonsense” and an attempt to smear his new political party.

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

Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr

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.

Envoy's Advice on Darfur Draws Criticism

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 6, 2009

NEW YORK, Aug. 5 -- The Obama administration's Sudan envoy is facing growing resistance to a suggestion he made recently to civilians displaced from Darfur that they should start planning to go back to their villages. Darfurian civilians and U.N. relief agencies say it is still too dangerous to return to the region where a six-year-long conflict has led to the deaths of more than 300,000 people.

In the latest sign of tension, Sheik al-Tahir, a leader at Kalma, one of Darfur's largest camps for displaced people, said Tuesday that homeless civilians would protest retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration's strategy for resolving the conflict and his assertion in June that genocide in Darfur has ended. Tahir and other camp leaders have accused Gration of taking the side of the Sudanese government, which has been seeking to dismantle the camps.

Gration denied this week that he is seeking to send Darfur's displaced into harm's way, saying he was simply urging Darfurians and the United Nations to begin preparations for return.

"I am not pushing for anybody to go back right now, because I don't think the situation is secure enough," he said in an interview Tuesday. "I don't want to get into a position where people are trying to return because there is peace and some modicum of security, and then we haven't done the planning to ensure they can move back."

The latest round of violence in Darfur began in February 2003, when two rebel movements took up arms against the Islamic government in Khartoum. In response, the government, backed by local Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed, launched a bloody counterinsurgency operation that the Bush and Obama administrations have termed genocidal.

A recent State Department analysis showed that more than 3,300 villages have been severely damaged or destroyed in the violence. Most of the survivors have either fled to neighboring Chad or crammed into a network of camps in Darfur.

Gration's effort to prod the displaced communities into preparing for a return has been complicated by the loyalty many still profess to an exiled rebel leader, Abdul Wahid al-Nur, who lives in Paris and has refused for years to participate in talks with the Khartoum government.

Gration met recently with leaders of the Kalma camp, which houses more than 100,000 displaced Darfurians. He told them that the violence was easing in Darfur and that he was confident he could negotiate a political settlement by the end of the year, according to notes of the encounter by a U.N. relief coordination team in Darfur known as the Inter-Agency Management Group.

Gration also urged camp leaders to select envoys to represent their interests at ongoing U.S.-backed talks in Doha, Qatar, suggesting that Wahid's boycott would deny them a voice in the process. Your "future is in his hands, and his hands are in Paris," Gration said, according to the briefing notes. "You need someone who is working for you."

Some of the camp leaders, according to the account, said they were unhappy with Gration's assertion that genocide was no longer occurring in Darfur, insisting that government forces and allied militias continue to commit atrocities against residents of Kalma. They said that they would never return to their villages unless the Janjaweed were disarmed.

The U.N. interagency group also expressed concern about Gration's assurance that "peace will prevail in Darfur by the end of the year, and returns have to happen," and described the conditions in Darfur as too dangerous to ensure civilians' safe return. It voiced concern that Gration was linking the fate of Darfurian civilians to political goals.

The U.N. group concluded that there are not enough funds or resources to deliver assistance to the villages people had fled or even to oversee the administrative work of ensuring that those who return are doing so voluntarily.

"In addition," the briefing note states, "it is important to keep in mind that a large part of the IDPS [internally displaced people] might opt for staying in their new settlements over a return to their place of origin."

U.S. Diplomat Urges Revised Sudan Policy

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 31, 2009

President Obama's top Sudan envoy said Thursday that there was no basis for keeping Sudan on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism and that it was only a matter of time before the United States would have to "unwind" economic sanctions against the Khartoum government.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration's remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee represented the most forceful critique yet by a U.S. official of the long-standing American effort to put economic and political pressure on Sudan's Islamic government. Sudan, which has harbored members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, was designated a terrorism sponsor in 1993.

Gration's comments Thursday raised concerns among activists and Sudan's critics in Congress that the administration is offering to reward Sudan without securing assurances that the government will take steps to end conflict in the Darfur region and in the south.

The president's national security advisers have been locked in dispute over the right mix of rewards and penalties to persuade the Khartoum government to pursue peace in those regions. Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been pressing for a tougher approach, citing Khartoum's history of violating agreements.

The interagency feud became public last month, when Gration told reporters that Sudan's government was no longer engaging in a "coordinated" campaign of mass murder against Darfurian civilians. Two days earlier, Rice had said that Sudan was engaged in a campaign of genocide in Darfur.

"There is a significant difference between what happened in 2003, which we characterized as genocide, and what is happening today," Gration said Thursday.

Gration came under fire from human rights activists, who accused him of saying too little to the committee about the brutality of the Sudanese government, whose leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, stands accused of war crimes in Darfur.

Also Thursday, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in partnership with Google Earth, released a State Department analysis of U.S. satellite imagery showing that more than 3,300 Darfurian villages were damaged or destroyed between 2003 and 2005, more than twice previous estimates. The images also showed that most of the destruction in Darfur occurred before 2006, with only a small number of villages apparently destroyed since then.

Gration told the Senate committee that the administration would "roll out" a new, comprehensive strategy on Darfur in the next few weeks that would include "both incentives and pressure" for Khartoum. The administration's priorities, he said, include negotiating a durable political solution in Darfur and averting a collapse of a U.S.-brokered 2005 peace accord ending a war between Khartoum and southern-backed rebels.

But Gration hinted at the tensions over strategy, noting that the State Department had rejected a proposal to fund more U.S. diplomats or private contractors to help support American mediation efforts in Sudan. He said he would raise the issue at a higher level.

Gration said U.S. economic sanctions had undermined American efforts to help implement the 2005 accord, barring the delivery of heavy equipment needed for road and rail projects in southern Sudan. He said the provision of such assistance would be vital in ensuring that southerners can establish a viable government if, as expected, they vote to secede from Sudan in a 2011 referendum.

"We're going to have to unwind some of these sanctions so that we can do the very things we need to do to ensure a peaceful transition to a state that is viable in the south, if they choose to do that," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/30/AR2009073004123.html

"War on terror" Used to Target Minorities

03 Jul 2009 08:34:00 GMT
Written by: Natasha Elkington

LONDON - Countries on the front line in the "war on terror" are using the battle against extremists as a smokescreen to crack down on minority groups, according to an international human rights group.

For the fourth straight year, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan topped an annual index compiled by Minority Rights Group International (MRG) of countries where minorities are most at risk of genocide, mass killings or violent repression.

"You see governments who have faced a genuine threat, but the point is the actions they have taken against the wider civilian population, including minority civilians, has been justified as part of the 'war on terror,'" MRG director Mark Lattimer told Reuters on Thursday.

"It has included disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions."

A two-year insurgency in Somalia led by al Shabaab militants, who have links to al Qaeda and include foreign Islamists among their ranks, has killed some 18,000 civilians.

The insurgency has put historically oppressed minority groups such as the Bantu, Gabooye and Yibir at particular risk, the chairman of Somali Minority Rights and Aid Forum, Mohamed Hassan Daryeel, said.

"If the Yibir go with the government, they will be attacked by the radical Islamists. At the same time, if they go with the Islamists, they will be considered terrorists, and if they are neutral they'll be targeted by all sides."

Daryeel said recent amputations carried out by al Shabaab fighters were performed on child soldiers forcibly recruited from minority groups. "They are at the bottom of society, the most disadvantaged," he said.

Despite a decline in violence in Iraq, the report said civilian deaths from violence were still estimated at 300-800 a month over the past year.

It said minorities continued to bear the brunt of the violence, especially in the Nineveh area, home to the Shabak people.

"The Shabak community has suffered a lot at the hands of the terrorist groups and at the hands of the Kurdish 'Assayish' (secret police)," head of Iraq's Minorities Council, Hunain Al-Qaddo, told Reuters.

He said around 10,000 Shabak families had fled parts of Mosul to their homeland in the Nineveh plains for fear of being killed because of their ethnicity.

The rest of the top 10 list was comprised of Myanmar in fifth place, followed by Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Israel/Palestinian territories.

Pakistan rose on the list due to an escalating conflict against different Islamist groups, combined with growing violence in national politics and suppression of dissidents.

Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen were assessed as under greater danger than a year ago with their governments' involvement in regional conflicts compounding the risk of repression at home.

African states make up half the report's top 20 list. (Editing by Robert Woodward)