KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Darfur rebels fought Sudanese troops in a suburb of Khartoum on Saturday in a bid to seize power, but the government said the attack on the capital had been defeated.
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It was the first time fighting had reached the city in decades of conflict between the traditionally Arab-dominated central government of Africa's biggest country and rebels from peripheral regions that complain of neglect.
Heavy gunfire and artillery shook Omdurman, across the River Nile from the heart of Khartoum. Helicopters and armored vehicles headed for the fighting and an overnight curfew was declared.
"The main aim of this failed terrorist sabotage attack was to provoke media coverage and let people imagine that they had the ability to enter Khartoum," Mandour al-Mahdi, political secretary of the ruling National Congress Party told state television.
"Thank God this attempt has been completely defeated. Some high level JEM commanders were killed," he said, referring to the Darfur Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.
LIGHTNING ADVANCE
Sudan accused neighboring Chad of backing the rebels, who made a lightning advance across some 600 km (400 miles) of desert and scrub between Darfur and Khartoum. A top official said the attack destroyed any chance of peace talks.
Chad's government denied any involvement in the attack which it condemned as an "adventure."
Sudanese state television showed pictures of corpses, blood and burned vehicles in the streets. It displayed what it said were rebel prisoners, including two who confessed to the camera. One looked badly beaten.
Witnesses said gunfire continued in Omdurman's western outskirts.
The rebels dismissed the government version of events and said fighting was still going on in their attempt to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
"We are in Omdurman, we are in Khartoum north. This is not something that is going to be finished in a few hours," JEM official al-Tahir al-Faki told Reuters from Britain. "There is an imbalance of power and wealth, we have to sort this out."
Khartoum state is home to around 8 million of the 38 million people in a country bigger than Western Europe.
Sudan's economy, driven by increasing oil production, has grown rapidly since a peace deal between north and south ended one civil war in 2005, but that agreement did not cover the conflict that erupted in Darfur five years ago.
International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million been made homeless in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms.
The United States describes the conflict in Darfur as genocide, but Khartoum rejects that term and says only around 10,000 people have been killed. Sudan is a close ally of China, a big oil industry investor and its main arms supplier.
Western countries, pushing for peace talks, have accused Khartoum of dragging its feet over deployment of a 26,000 strong U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. Fighting has intensified there in recent months.
TALKS RULED OUT
Presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail ruled out any chance of peace talks with JEM after the attack on Khartoum.
"From this day we will never deal with this movement again other than in the way they have just dealt with us," he said on Al Jazeera television.
The United States urged both sides to cease hostilities.
Sudanese officials accused neighboring Chad of backing Saturday's rebel attack. Chad in turn says Khartoum is behind rebels who came close to seizing power there in February. Both countries deny supporting the others' rebel movements.
"This was fully supported by the Chad government," presidential adviser Ghazi Salaheddin told Reuters. "There are indications that another contingent in on its way from Chad. Personally I doubt they will try this again after what has happened here."
Chad denied these "baseless" accusations, an official at the presidency said.
"The Chadian government is surprised by allegations by Sudanese television of N'Djamena's supposed support for the attackers," Communications Minister and government spokesman Mahamat Hissene said in a statement released in N'Djamena.
"The government of the Republic of Chad denies any involvement in this adventure, which it condemns unreservedly, whoever the authors are.
Chad and Sudan signed a non-aggression pact in mid-March but accused each other of reneging on the deal soon afterwards.
There were signs that Egypt was showing ready to offer support for Khartoum on Saturday. One witness said he saw three Egyptian fighter planes and one Egyptian army cargo plane landing at the airport. The witness said he could see the Egyptian flag on the side of the planes http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080510/ts_nm/sudan_darfur_dc
but but what were the Chinese doing all this time ?
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So the western oil companies are getting desperate now, telling the rebels to size the capital for a regime change. Luckily for China it fail, quite far sights for the CCP leadership to ship advance arms to the Sudan government.
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China and USA in New Cold War over Africa’s oil riches
By F William Engdahl, May 20, 2007
To paraphrase the famous quip during the 1992 US Presidential debates, when an unknown William Jefferson Clinton told then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid ,” the present concern of the current Washington Administration over Darfur in southern Sudan is not, if we were to look closely, genuine concern over genocide against the peoples in that poorest of poor part of a forsaken section of Africa.
No. “It’s the oil, stupid.”
Hereby hangs a tale of cynical dimension appropriate to a Washington Administration that has shown no regard for its own genocide in Iraq, when its control over major oil reserves is involved. What’s at stake in the battle for Darfur? Control over oil, lots and lots of oil.
The case of Darfur, a forbidding piece of sun-parched real estate in the southern part of Sudan, illustrates the new Cold War over oil, where the dramatic rise in China’s oil demand to fuel its booming growth has led Beijing to embark on an aggressive policy of – ironically – dollar diplomacy. With its more than $1.3 trillion in mainly US dollar reserves at the People`s Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa, the central region between Sudan and Chad is priority. This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit more cleverly than Washington. Darfur is a major battleground in this high-stakes contest for oil control.
China Oil diplomacy
In recent months, Beijing has embarked on a series of initiatives designed to secure long-term raw materials sources from one of the planet’s most endowed regions – the African subcontinent. No raw material has higher priority in Beijing at present than the securing of long term oil sources.
Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have left Washington furious. China is using no-strings-attached dollar credits to gain access to Africa’s vast raw material wealth, leaving Washington’s typical control game via the World Bank and IMF out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot?
In November last year Beijing hosted an extraordinary summit of 40 African heads of state. They literally rolled out the red carpet for the heads of among others Algeria, Nigeria, Mali, Angola, Central African Republic, Zambia, South Africa.
China has just done an oil deal, linking the Peoples Republic of China with the continent's two largest nations - Nigeria and South Africa. China's CNOC will lift the oil in Nigeria, via a consortium that also includes South African Petroleum Co. giving China access to what could be 175,000 barrels a day by 2008. It’s a $2.27 billion deal that gives state-controlled CNOC a 45% stake in a large off-shore Nigeria oil field. Previously, Nigeria had been considered in Washington to be an asset of the Anglo-American oil majors, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron.
China has been generous in dispensing its soft loans, with no interest or outright grants to some of the poorest debtor states of Africa. The loans have gone to infrastructure including highways, hospitals, and schools, a stark contrast to the brutal austerity demands of the IMF and World Bank. In 2006 China committed more than $8 billion to Nigeria, Angola and Mozambique, versus $2.3 billion to all sub-Saharan Africa from the World Bank. Ghana is negotiating a $1.2 billion Chinese electrification loan. Unlike the World Bank, a de facto arm of US foreign economic policy, China shrewdly attaches no strings to its loans.
This oil-related Chinese diplomacy has led to the bizarre accusation from Washington that Beijing is trying to “secure oil at the sources,” something Washington foreign policy has itself been preoccupied with for at least a Century.
No source of oil has been more the focus of China-US oil conflict of late than Sudan, home of Darfur.
Sudan oil riches
Beijing’s China National Petroleum Company, CNPC, is Sudan’s largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oil field development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum with the Sudan government. The oil fields (see graphic) are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by the United States, to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.
CNPC built an oil pipeline from its concession blocs 1, 2 and 4 in southern Sudan, to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea where oil is loaded on tankers for China. Eight percent of China’s oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes up to 65% to 80% of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels/day of oil production. Sudan last year was China’s fourth largest foreign oil source. In 2006 China passed Japan to become the world’s second largest importer of oil after the United States, importing 6.5 million barrels a day of the black gold. With its oil demand growing by an estimated 30% a year, China will pass the US in oil import demand in a few years. That reality is the motor driving Beijing foreign policy in Africa.
Source: USAID
A look at the southern Sudan oil concessions shows that China’s CNPC holds rights to bloc 6 which straddles Darfur, near the border to Chad and the Central African Republic. In April 2005 Sudan’s government announced it had found oil in South Darfur whoich is estimated to be able when developed to pump 500,000 barrels/day. The world press forgot to report that vital fact in discussing the Darfur conflict.
Using the genocide charge to militarize Sudan’s oil region
Genocide was the preferred theme, and Washington was the orchestra conductor. Curiously, while all observers acknowledge that Darfur has seen a large human displacement and human misery and tens of thousands or even as much as 300,000 deaths in the last several years, only Washington and the NGO’s close to it use the charged term “genocide” to describe Darfur. If they are able to get a popular acceptance of the charge genocide, it opens the possibility for drastic “regime change” intervention by NATO and de facto by Washington into Sudan’s sovereign affairs.
The genocide theme is being used, with full-scale Hollywood backing from the likes of pop stars like George Clooney, to orchestrate the case for a de facto NATO occupation of the region. So far the Sudan government has vehemently refused, not surprisingly.
The US Government repeatedly uses “genocide” to refer to Darfur. It is the only government to do so. US Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said during a USINFO online interview last November 17, "The ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan – a 'gross violation' of human rights – is among the top international issues of concern to the United States." The Bush administration keeps insisting that genocide has been going on in Darfur since 2003, despite the fact that a five-man panel UN mission led by Italian Judge Antonio Cassese reported in 2004 that genocide had not been committed in Darfur, rather that grave human rights abuses were committed. They called for war crime trials.
Merchants of death
The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and neighboring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army, headed until his death in July 2005, by John Garang, trained at US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
By pouring arms into first southern Sudan in the eastern part and since discovery of oil in Darfur, to that region as well, Washington fuelled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the SPLA, the umbrella NDA opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels.
There are two rebel groups fighting in Sudan's Darfur region against the Khartoum central government of President Omar al-Bashir – the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM) and the larger Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).
In February 2003 the SLA launched attacks on Sudan government positions in the Darfur region. SLA Secretary-General Minni Arkou Minnawi called for armed struggle, accusing the government of ignoring Darfur. "The objective of the SLA is to create a united democratic Sudan.” In other words, regime change in Sudan. The US Senate adopted a resolution in February 2006 that requested North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Darfur, as well as a stronger U.N. peacekeeping force with a robust mandate. A month later, President Bush also called for additional NATO forces in Darfur. Uh huh... Genocide? Or oil?
The Pentagon has been busy training African military officers in the US, much as it has for Latin American officers for decades. Its International Military Education and Training (IMET) program has provided training to military officers from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, in effect every country on Sudan’s border. Much of the arms that have fuelled the killing in Darfur and the south have been brought in via murky, protected private “merchants of death” such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US, Victor Bout. Bout has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling weapons across Africa. US Government officials strangely leave his operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the Interpol wanted list for money laundering.
US development aid for all Sub-Sahara Africa including Chad, has been cut sharply in recent years while its military aid has risen. Oil and the scramble for strategic raw materials is the clear reason. The region of southern Sudan from the Upper Nile to the borders of Chad is rich in oil. Washington knew that long before the Sudanese government.
Chevron’s 1974 oil project
US oil majors have known about Sudan’s oil wealth since the early 1970’s. In 1979, Jafaar Nimeiry, Sudan head of state, broke with the Soviets and invited Chevron to develop oil in the Sudan. That was perhaps a fatal mistake. UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush had personally told Nimeiry of satellite photos indicating oil in Sudan. Nimeiry took the bait. Wars over oil have been the consequence ever since.
Chevron found big oil reserves in southern Sudan. It spent $1.2 billion finding and testing them. That oil triggered what is called Sudan’s second civil war in 1983. Chevron was target of repeated attacks and killings and suspended the project in 1984. In 1992, it sold it's Sudanese oil concessions. Then China began to develop the abandoned Chevron fields in 1999 with notable results.
But Chevron is not far from Darfur today.
Chad oil and pipeline politics
Condi Rice’s Chevron is in neighboring Chad, together with the other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They’ve just built a $3.7 billion oil pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels/day of oil from Doba in central Chad near Darfur Sudan, via Cameroon to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean, destined for US refineries.
To do it, they worked with Chad “President for life,” Idriss Deby, a corrupt despot who has been accused of feeding US-supplied arms to the Darfur rebels. Deby joined Washington’s Pan Sahel Initiative run by the Pentagon’s US-European Command, to train his troops to fight “Islamic terrorism.” The majority of the tribes in Darfur region are Islamic.
Supplied with US military aid, training and weapons, in 2004 Deby launched the initial strike that set off the conflict in Darfur, using members of his elite Presidential Guard who originate from the province, providing the men with all terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to Darfur rebels fighting the Khartoum government in the southwest Sudan. The US military support to Deby in fact had been the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum reacted and the ensuing debacle was unleashed in full tragic force.
Washington-backed NGO’s and the US Government claim unproven genocide as a pretext to ultimately bring UN/NATO troops into the oilfields of Darfur and south Sudan. Oil, not human misery, is behind Washington’s new interest in Darfur.
The “Darfur genocide” campaign began in 2003, the same time the Chad-Cameroon pipeline oil began to flow. The US now had a base in Chad to go after Darfur oil and, potentially, co-opt China’s new oil sources. Darfur is strategic, straddling Chad, Central African Republic, Egypt and Libya.
US military objectives in Darfur – and the Horn of Africa more widely – are being served at present by the US and NATO backing of the African Union troops in Darfur. There NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops who are categorized as “neutral” and “peacekeepers.” Sudan is at war on three fronts, each country – Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia – with a significant US military presence and ongoing US military programs. The war in Sudan involves both US covert operations and US trained “rebel” factions coming in from South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Chad’s Deby looks to China too
The completion of the US and World Bank-financed oil pipeline from Chad to the Cameroon coast was designed as one part of a far grander Washington scheme to control the oil riches of central Africa from Sudan to the entire Gulf of Guinea.
But Washington’s erstwhile pal, Chad’s President for Life, Idriss Deby, began to get unhappy with his small share of the US-controlled oil profits. When he and the Chad Parliament decided in early 2006 to take more of the oil revenues to finance military operations and beef up its army, new World Bank President, Iraq war architect, Paul Wolfowitz, moved to suspend loans to the country. Then that August, after Deby had won re-election, he created Chad’s own oil company, SHT, and threatened to expel Chevron and Malaysia’s Petronas for not paying taxes owed, and demanding a 60% share of the Chad oil prieline. In the end he came to terms with the oil companies, but winds of change were blowing.
Deby also faces growing internal opposition from a Chad rebel group, United Front for Change, known under its French name as FUC, which he claims is being covertly funded by Sudan. This region is a very complex part of the world of war. The FUC has based itself in Darfur.
Into this unstable situation, Beijing has shown up in Chad with a full coffer of aid money in hand. In late January, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a state visit to Sudan and to Cameroon among other African states. In 2006 China’s leaders visited no less than 48 African states. In August 2006 Beijing hosted Chad’s Foreign Minister for talks and resumption of formal diplomatic ties cut in 1997. China has begun to import oil from Chad as well as Sudan. Not that much oil, but if Beijing has its way, that will soon change.
This April, Chad’s Foreign Minister announced that talks with China over greater China participation in Chad’s oil development were “progressing well.” He referred to the terms the Chinese seek for oil development, calling them, “much more equal partnerships than those we are used to having.”
The Chinese economic presence in Chad, ironically, may be more effective in calming the fighting and displacement in Darfur than any African Union or UN troop presence ever could. That would not be welcome for some people in Washington and at Chevron headquarters, as they would not find the oil falling into their greasy bloody hands.
Chad and Darfur are but part of the vast China effort to secure “oil at the source” across Africa. Oil is also the prime factor in US Africa policy today. George W. Bush’s interest in Africa includes a new US base in Sao Tome/Principe 124 miles off the Gulf of Guinea from which it can control Gulf of Guinea oilfields from Angola in the south to Congo, Gabon, Equitorial Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria. That just happens to be the very same areas where recent Chinese diplomatic and investment activity has focussed.
“West Africa’s oil has become of national strategic interest to us,” stated US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner already back in 2002. Darfur and Chad are but an extension of the US Iraq policy “with other means” – control of oil everywhere. China is challenging that control “everywhere,” especially in Africa. It amounts to a new undeclared Cold War over oil.
Type98G So the western oil companies are getting desperate now, telling the rebels to size the capital for a regime change. Luckily for China it fail, quite far sights for the CCP leadership to ship advance arms to the Sudan government.
Don't reverse the role: until now it was the Chinese who control Sudanese oil (even part of Chadian oil) and the Chinese friends who massacre the population of Darfur and attacked Chad up to NDjamena.
This one was just to remind the Chinese that there ancestral humility fit them much better than the arrogant and uncompromising way they are doing since they are a big power. Wanting too much too fast you risk to lose everything.
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of course it's oil. Currently the Western African oil go to the Western ports because there is no pipeline to carry the oil to the east through the red sea.
And guess where this pipeline need to be built ? Darfur.
Ok we agree there.
Now I think China didn't played it very well:
1- one cannot massacre a whole population like the Sudanese do in darfur. China got to tell Sudan to calm down a little and accept to share wealth with the population of Darfur,
2- if the Americans have a big influence in western Africa, France have a little influence too and have some interests and some friends. One can't ignore that despite we are all little and weak. It happens that contrary to the US, France doesn't care if the oil go to the west or to the east. All France want is have a return on its investments. Only the agressive policy of China and Sudan prevent Chad, France, Sudan and China to find an agreement imho.
This message has been edited by ultrarep on May 11, 2008 9:17 AM This message has been edited by ultrarep on May 11, 2008 9:16 AM This message has been edited by ultrarep on May 11, 2008 9:15 AM
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One problem about the genocide bit, has there really been a genocide? Has there been a population wipe off, there has been a lot of displacements but killing fields? Has 200,000 people really been killed off ?
This isn't the first time the media got it wrong, like the WMD in Iraq that is suppose to exist that started the liberation Iraq freedom.
BTW: the rebels started this fight first not the Sudan government.
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"The US Government repeatedly uses “genocide” to refer to Darfur. It is the only government to do so. US Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said during a USINFO online interview last November 17, "The ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan – a 'gross violation' of human rights – is among the top international issues of concern to the United States." The Bush administration keeps insisting that genocide has been going on in Darfur since 2003, despite the fact that a five-man panel UN mission led by Italian Judge Antonio Cassese reported in 2004 that genocide had not been committed in Darfur rather that grave human rights abuses were committed. They called for war crime trials."
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"U.N. report: Darfur not genocide
But perpetrators of violence should be prosecuted
Tuesday, February 1, 2005 Posted: 0307 GMT (1107 HKT)
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The government of Sudan and militias have acted together in committing widespread atrocities in Darfur that should be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal, but the violent acts do not amount to genocide, a U.N. commission has said.
The commission, charged with investigating the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 1.8 million people, found that "most attacks were deliberately and indiscriminately directed against civilians."
"In particular, the commission found that government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur," the commission said in its 176-page report.
"These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis, and therefore may amount to crimes against humanity."
However, the commission said it does not believe the atrocities committed amount to a policy of genocide, as the United States has alleged.
"The crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central government authorities are concerned," the report said.
"Generally speaking, the policy of attacking, killing and forcibly displacing members of some tribes does not evince a specific intent to annihilate, in whole or in part, a group distinguished on racial, ethnic, national or religious grounds."
The commission goes on to say that it recognizes that in some instances, individuals -- including Sudanese government officials -- "may commit acts with genocidal intent."
"Whether this was the case in Darfur, however, is a determination that only a competent court can make on a case-by-case basis," it said.
The commission added: "International offenses such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."
The commission said it was withholding the names of those behind the violence, but said senior government officials and military commanders may be responsible "for knowingly failing to prevent or repress the perpetration of crimes."
It said the names were being withheld publicly to protect witnesses from retribution, to respect due process and because the commission was not vested with investigative or prosecutorial powers.
"The commission instead will list the names in a sealed file that will be placed in the custody of the U.N. secretary-general," the report said.
It also said the material should be passed on to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, which prosecutes war crimes and other atrocities.
The report found that Arab Janjaweed militias in Darfur were "acting, under the authority, with the support, complicity or tolerance of the Sudanese State authorities."
The conflict in Darfur began intensifying in 2003, when two non-Arab African groups took up arms against what they believed to be the Arab-dominated government's discrimination against black Africans.
A counterinsurgency campaign ensued, in which the Janjaweed -- a term that literally means "devil on a horse" -- committed atrocities that have devastated the region.
The report found that some recruits for the Janjaweed are fighters from Libya, Chad and other nations.
The report also said Sudan's People's Armed Forces played a key role in the armed conflict, and that the National Security and Intelligence Service had a central role and "is responsible for the design, planning and implementation of policies associated with the conflict."
The commission was formed in October 2004 and its members visited Sudan in November and January of this year. Its investigative team remained in Sudan from November through January.
The commission found that the atrocities continued, even as it met with Sudanese officials.
The United Nations has estimated that more than 70,000 people have died in Sudan, the result of the violence and malnutrition plaguing the area.
But U.N. officials say the number is believed to be much higher than that, because the United Nations has documented deaths only since April 2004.
The conflict has displaced an estimated 1.6 million people within Darfur, with another 200,000 fleeing to neighboring Chad, according to U.N. figures."
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The government of Sudan and militias have acted together in committing widespread atrocities in Darfur that should be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal, but the violent acts do not amount to genocide, a U.N. commission has said.
The commission, charged with investigating the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 1.8 million people, found that "most attacks were deliberately and indiscriminately directed against civilians."
"In particular, the commission found that government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur," the commission said in its 176-page report.
"These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis, and therefore may amount to crimes against humanity."
--------------
They are targetting a whole community, so it is a genocide.
Sudan’s special court on Darfur crimes not satisfactory, UN genocide expert says
[Juan Méndez briefs the press]
Juan Méndez briefs the press
16 December 2005 – A United Nations genocide expert today voiced disappointment in the efforts of Sudan’s Government to address the crimes committed in the country’s western Darfur region, where conflict has been marked by massive displacement, rights abuses and widespread killings.
The UN Security Council has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to probe the situation, but earlier this week, the Sudanese Government indicated that it would not cooperate with the ICC.
Speaking to reporters in New York, Juan Mendez, Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, pointed out that this was not an option but a legal obligation. “I have consistently stressed that ensuring accountability is an essential element of genocide prevention,” said Mr. Mendez, who visited Darfur in September.
Asked whether the Government was living up to its pledges, he replied: “My impression is very discouraging, quite frankly. For months nothing was done about the literally hundreds of cases of destruction of villages.”
He said the Government’s own special court had also produced “discouraging” results. “They have dealt with some cases that seem to be marginal to the serious events that happened in 2003 and 2004,” he said.
He added that if the Khartoum Government refuses to cooperate with the ICC then “the Security Council should take appropriate action.”
During his visit to Sudan in September, he said, he expected to see a more stable situation. “Unfortunately, the situation that I found was of great concern.” He cited a “significant disconnect” between the account of the Government on its actions to address the situation in Darfur and those of the region’s people.
Mr. Mendez also reported on his visit to Côte d’Ivoire earlier this month, where he witnessed significant tensions which posed a risk of massive human rights violations based on ethnicity, religion or national origin.
In response, he called for measures to address the issue, including starting disarmament, holding legitimate elections, and strengthening the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI).
Type98G One problem about the genocide bit, has there really been a genocide? Has there been a population wipe off, there has been a lot of displacements but killing fields? Has 200,000 people really been killed off ?
This isn't the first time the media got it wrong, like the WMD in Iraq that is suppose to exist that started the liberation Iraq freedom.
BTW: the rebels started this fight first not the Sudan government.
We had some doubt already before 2003 but after there was no doubt: the US media and population are very easy to manipulate and influence, that's right.
Here in France the opinion about Darfur are more balanced. There is the usual morons like Bernard Henri Levy that is crying for genocide and calling for immediate invasion and "humanitarian interference". But the version of the state is (was?) more about calling this a dirty civil war rather than plain genocide.
It remains that the Sudanese gov and its milicia had been extremelly and uselessly violent, there was mass murders, mass rapes, hundred of villages erased from the map and so on. There is no doubt about this.
China should take care not to be involved in atrocities: one can't be a power without taking the responsiblities that comes with power.
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According to the UN report it seems the rebels were involve with the killings too, looks like the only way to end this is when the Sudan government boots out the non-cooperative rebels out of the country.
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Type98G According to the UN report it seems the rebels were involve with the killings too, looks like the only way to end this is when the Sudan government boots out the non-cooperative rebels out of the country.
including the women and children ?
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Sudan isn't entire to blame for this; Chad has to be responsible for this as well since they are supplying arms to the rebels from the start of the conflict, anyway there was a peace keeping force in Darfur but the rebels attack an peace keeping base with 12 peace keepers killed off and 50 missing. Odd that this happen when truce talks were going on, it is almost as if the rebels don't want peace.
This message has been edited by Type98G on May 11, 2008 11:36 AM
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all the european leaders are using the word GENOCIDE
Bullsh1t white lies. I don't see the Africans complaining.
BTW, there are NO Chinese troops in Sudan. It is not China's place to tell what other countries do. China will NEVER interfere in other peeps' business.
So fook off you racist whities.
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Hiiiii YA!!!!!!
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Big Fat Panda Bear BTW, there are NO Chinese troops in Sudan. It is not China's place to tell what other countries do. China will NEVER interfere in other peeps' business.
So fook off you racist whities.
you yankee shouldn't speak in the name of real Chinese lightly that way. You know they risk to burn there delicate silk pandies there do you ?
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Chad is an important strategic French ally. Maybe we should forment a war there to get rid of both the actual hostile Sudanese Gov't and the Chinese sucking the oil out there like vampires. A stone two birds. The Chinese were behind the major failed coup attempt in Chad.
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De Gaulle to the General Koenig, Norman hero of Bir Hakeim: "Hear and tell your troops: the whole of France is watching you, you are our pride."[
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A war has already started there started by Chad and the oil companies, the Sudanese are just retaliating. Besides isn't EU and US suppose to get the lion share of the Iraq oil market.
This message has been edited by Type98G on May 12, 2008 7:28 AM
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Quote:A war has already started there started by Chad and the oil companies, the Sudanese are just retaliating. Besides isn't EU and US suppose to get the lion share of the Iraq oil market.
The EU? You mean the UK. France gets nothing from the Iraqi oil market, except maybe the refineries. We've opposed the war. But we are not interested in Sudanese oil; it's the uranium mines in nearby Niger that matter. If Sudan destabilizes Chad, then Sudan will be destroyed. Don't underestimate Chad. In case of all out war with Sudan they will benefit from French intelligence and leadership, just like in the Chad-lybian war. And Lybia was a far more formidable force.
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De Gaulle to the General Koenig, Norman hero of Bir Hakeim: "Hear and tell your troops: the whole of France is watching you, you are our pride."[
This message has been edited by Eric_De_La_Legion on May 12, 2008 7:59 AM
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Sudan severed relations with Chad on Sunday, accusing it of supporting fighters who assaulted the capital the night before, and warned that a top Darfur rebel leader was hiding somewhere in the city.
A curfew was lifted in Khartoum but remained in effect in the capital's twin city of Omdurman, where rebels were still loose, state-run radio reported quoting police Maj. Gen. Mohamed Abdul-Majeed.
The surprise assault late Saturday was the closest Darfur rebels have ever come to Sudan's seat of government, hundreds of miles from their bases in the far west of the country.
The government issued several statements claiming to have crushed the rebels and paraded images of captured and bloodied fighters on television.
"I would like to assure people that everything is now under control, the rebel forces have been totally destroyed," said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in a televised address Sunday, wearing military fatigues.
"These forces come from Chad who trained them ... we hold the Chadian regime fully responsible for what happened," he said. "We have no choice but to sever relations."
Al-Bashir said he reserved the right to retaliate against the "outlaw regime," raising the specter of a border war between the two countries who have long traded accusations over support for each others' rebels.
The Interior Ministry called on people in Khartoum and Omdurman to remain inside while it searched for "infiltrators" _ rebels who had doffed their uniforms in the fighting to hide among the people.
Abdul-Majeed told the city's government-run radio that some rebels are still operating in Omdurman.
Extra checkpoints were still in place Sunday throughout Khartoum, and an Associated Press reporter saw at least three rebels being arrested in a northern section of the city.
State television for the first time ever broadcast the picture of Khalil Ibrahim, leader of Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement, which carried out the assault, asking citizens to call a special hotline if they saw him because he was hiding somewhere in Omdurman. The government later announced a reward for information leading to his capture.
The JEM has become one of the most effective rebel movements in Darfur, where ethnic Africans took up arms against the government in 2003 to protest discrimination. In the last year it has expanded its operations into the neighboring province of Kordofan, even attacking oil installations.
Saturday night's assault, however, was the first time they had made it anywhere near the capital.
While the rebels declared the assault a success, the government was quick to describe it as a disaster for the rebels, displaying prisoners and captured vehicles on television.
"This attempt was a foolish act and those who carried it out did not take into account the negative consequences _ the attempt was based on lies and disinformation," said military spokesman Brig. Gen. Osman al-Agbash.
With just a few thousand members, JEM is outnumbered and far less equipped than Sudan's military, which believed to be more than 100,000-strong. Yet the group presents the most prominent military challenge to the Sudanese government in Darfur.
The assault puts greater pressure on the Sudanese government to deal with the situation in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes since 2003. Sudan denies backing the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads accused of the worst atrocities in the conflict.
Attempts to revive peace talks between Sudan and rebel groups have failed to stem the violence. Rebel groups accuse the Khartoum regime of stonewalling the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force that would try to establish security before peace talks.
The instability on Sudan's western border has spilled over into neighboring Chad, with armed groups and refugees crossing the remote border on a regular basis and destabilizing both countries and straining relations.
"These forces are Chadian forces originally, they moved from there led by Khalil Ibrahim who is an agent of the Chadian regime. It is a Chadian attack," al-Bashir said Sunday morning.
For its part, Chad has accused Sudanese authorities of arming rebels who launched a failed assault February on the Chadian capital, N'Djamena. The rebels reached the gate of the presidential palace, but fled toward Sudan after Chad's army repelled them in fighting that left hundreds dead.
Though the two countries signed a peace agreement in March promising to prevent armed groups from operating along each other's shared borders, the accusations have continued unabated.
