Helping curb the humanitarian crisis in Darfur should take the lead

Additional Reporting By Ahmad Maher, IOL Staff

CAIRO, August 8 (IslamOnline.net) – No sooner had Sudanese officials reassured the world that the deplorable conditions in the troubled Darfur region were improving day in and day out than western media accused Khartoum of foot-dragging and called the atrocities there systematic.

In the absence of media outlets, news channels reporting from Darfur on the ground – the thing Khartoum definitely takes the blame for – it is difficult to decide which part is telling the truth.

An avalanche of mixed reports is being descended upon peoples in the four corners of the world, who find themselves completely bewildered by snappy and moving headlines in foreign press and Khartoum’s favorite "everything-is-ok" cliché.

The wishy-washy approach of United Nations officials in dealing with the crisis add to the bewilderment of the people and to the ambiguity surrounding the whole issue.

“Genocide,” “forcible return of refugees,” “mass rapes” and “free-for-all looting” are few to mention headlines that make the news in many western media outlets and newspapers.

The latest of which is an article Sunday, August 8, in Britain’s mass-circulation The Independent, which accused Khartoum of sending refugees back into the hands of the “murderous” Janjaweed militia.

It said returnees are being killed by gunmen - sometimes, it claimed, citing rebel sources, in collusion with security forces.

“There is also evidence that the police have attacked village chiefs who have refused to lead their communities back home from refugee camps,” the British paper said.

The Sudanese authorities were quick to deny the allegations. They maintain that they have once again made large swaths of the region safe, citing a 30-day plan of action ratified in tandem with the world body to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur by creating safe areas and secure rood for aid teams.

Janjaweed leaders, on their part, accuse rebels in Darfur of misleading the United States and the United Nations Security Council by making “too much fuss about nothing”.

“I warn that Sudan will be another quagmire for the United States whose intelligence services had misled them into an Iraqi swamp that badly tarnished the US image in the eyes of the peoples of the region and left its interests vulnerable,” the Janjaweed leader has said in an interview with IslamOnline.net.

But what makes the situation like doing a 1,000-piece jigsaw is an account given to The Independent that helicopters have pounded entire villages, a weapon that cannot be used by the Janjaweed nomads by any stretch of the imagination.

“The Janjaweed do not have helicopters. I don't know how many people were killed. They were burning everything, and there was shooting. We just ran with the children. We have lost everything, but at least we are alive,” the British paper was told.

Conflicting 'UN' Reports

“The current humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur, for which the government is largely responsible,” warned Jahangir

Away from the British report, United Nations officials come up every now and then with conflicting reports and assessments of the situation on the ground.

Only in less than 24 hours, two such reports were released by two officials, making it look like: Here comes the castigation, there goes the welcome.

A UN investigator, though reporting on her own responsibility as an independent investigator, said that the Sudanese government was to blame for a humanitarian disaster in Darfur and its responsibility for large numbers of killings in the region was “beyond doubt”.

“It is beyond doubt that the government of the Sudan is responsible for extrajudicial and summary executions of large numbers of people over the last several months in the Darfur region,” Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who visited Darfur in June, told the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights.

“The current humanitarian disaster unfolding in Darfur , for which the government is largely responsible, has put millions of civilians at risk,” she said in the report.

She further added it was “very likely that many will die in the months to come as a result of starvation and disease”.

Her report, in effect, appeared to be the toughest to emerge from the world body on Darfur .

A day earlier, UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard said Secretary General Kofi Annan hailed the plan of action struck by Khartoum and the United Nations.

Earlier in the month, the United Nations said food rations have successfully reached about one million people displaced by fighting in the Sudanese region of Darfur , according to the BBC News Online.

It said the World Food Program (WFP) distributed 15,000 tons of food last month.

It also welcomed the Sudanese government’s agreement with UN envoy Jan Pronk to double the number of its security forces in Darfur , taking the total number to 12,000.

Peace Talks To Resume

More positive signs is the agreement between Khartoum and the Darfur rebels to resume peace talks on August 23 in Abuja , Nigeria , which was confirmed Sunday by the peace mediator, the African Union.

In another progress for the embattled Khartoum government, more than 200 members of a rebel group fighting Sudanese government forces in Darfur are said to have defected.

More and more, the World Health Organization said that the situation in the restive area did not amount to genocide or ethnic cleansing as claimed.

Warmongering

On the other side, some US officials keep fueling the warmongering rhetoric on Darfur .

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in an interview with the London-based Al-Hayat daily the Khartoum authorities had not yet done enough to stop the militias.

“The government of Sudan has done some things in response to the UN Security Council resolution, particularly on the humanitarian side. But they get a failing grade when it comes to reining in the Janjaweed, and they've got to step up to that challenge,” he said the Arabic-language newspaper.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Friday called the crisis “one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of our time” and said the killing there was “genocide”.

On July 22, the US House Of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution describing the situation in Darfur a "genocide."

However, Sudanese officials and experts have refuted the claims and warned of plots targeting the unity of the oil-exporting country.

Influential leaders of the US evangelical organizations signed a letter asking President George W. Bush Wednesday to consider a military action  against Sudan .

On Monday, August 2, the Guardian reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is making the case for a "colonial war " against Sudan because of its growing oil reserves, as there are no signs of highly-touted claims of genocide in the Arab country.