Darfur
Thousands displaced in S. Sudan’s far north-west
Border clashes and insecurity along the border between Western Bahr El Ghazal and South Darfur have affected thousands of people in Raja County, causing displacement and suffering, according to the county executive.
Most of the inhabitants of Radom and Sira Malaka bomas have moved toward Fireka Boma, south of Raja, where they are facing lack of health services and food.
Raja County Commissioner Rizik Dominic told Radio Tamazuj in a phone interview on Tuesday that more than 10 thousand people in Raja County are lacking basic services as a result of border clashes in May. He explained that the situation in Fireka is worsened by fear of attacks attributed to the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has driven a number of South Sudanese away from the western border.
He explained that the local services are not enough for such a large number of people. Additionally, a number of Darfuri refugees have been living in Raja County for many years.
The commissioner explained that the bad road conditions are not allowing aid to reach Fireka and other areas.
He added that the local government is trying to link up with NGOs in order to find other ways to support the citizens in these emergency situations
Mr. Dominic appealed to NGOs to provide helicopters to deliver humanitarian aid while he also called on the government to improve the road conditions.
The Commissioner further said that at the moment the situation at Raja County’s border is unpredictable and Khartoum is still flying more soldiers into the border areas.
Sudan: Forgotten Darfur – Old Tactics and New Players
Amid claims of declining violence and wider regional transformations, the Darfur conflict has all but vanished from the international agenda since 2010. Virtually unnoticed by the international community, the conflict has moved into a new phase, in which the Government of Sudan has shifted away from using Arab proxy militias only to rely on newly formed (and newly armed) non-Arab proxies.
‘Forgotten Darfur‘ documents how this development has fundamentally changed the ethnic map of eastern Darfur, drawing on previously latent tensions between non-Arab groups over land, ethnicity, and local political dominance–and generating some of the most significant ethnically directed violence since the start of the conflict in 2003.
The ‘new’ war in eastern Darfur, which erupted in late 2010 and early 2011, has pitted non-Arab groups against other non-Arabs; specifically, government-backed militias drawn from small, previously marginalized non-Arab groups–including the Bergid, Berti, and Tunjur–deployed against Zaghawa rebel groups and communities.
‘Forgotten Darfur’ also reports how patterns of arms supplies to Sudanese government forces and proxy militias in Darfur have been almost entirely unimpeded by the international community, including the ineffectual UN arms embargo on Darfur. The Sudan Air Force has continued to move weapons into Darfur with complete impunity; it supported ground attacks with aerial bombardment in all of Darfur’s states during 2011 and in West and North Darfur during 2012, despite the UN Security Council’s prohibition on such offensive aerial operations since 2005.
The report also documents how transformations, regime change, and realignments in Chad, Libya, and South Sudan have not fully removed either the mechanisms of the motives for cross-border flows of arms, personnel, or political support to Darfur’s armed actors. In particular, ‘Forgotten Darfur’ explores relations between rebels and communities in western South Sudan and South Kordofan, and their potential to draw the Darfur conflict into much larger North-South confrontations. Increased linkages between Darfur’s rebel groups and the SPLM-N in South Kordofan, and the overlooked potential for conflict on the Darfur-Bahr al Ghazal border, are also highlighted.
The World’s Worst Human Rights Observer
As Arab League monitors work to expose President Bashar al-Assad‘s crackdown, the head of the mission is a Sudanese general accused of creating the fearsome “janjaweed,” which was responsible for the worst atrocities during the Darfur genocide.
BY DAVID KENNER DECEMBER 27, 2011
For the first time in Syria’s nine-month-old uprising, there are witnesses to President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown, which according to the United Nations has claimed more than 5,000 lives. Arab League observers arrived in the country on Dec. 26, and traveled to the city of Homs — the epicenter of the revolt, where the daily death toll regularly runs into the dozens, according to activist groups — on Dec. 27. Thousands of people took to the streets to protest against Assad upon the observers’ arrival, while activists said Syrian tanks withdrew from the streets only hours before the Arab League team entered the city.
“I am going to Homs,” insisted Sudanese Gen. Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the head of the Arab League observer mission, telling reporters that so far the Assad regime had been “very cooperative.”
But Dabi may be the unlikeliest leader of a humanitarian mission the world has ever seen. He is a staunch loyalist of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity for his government’s policies in Darfur. And Dabi’s own record in the restive Sudanese region, where he stands accused of presiding over the creation of the feared Arab militias known as the “janjaweed,” is enough to make any human rights activist blanch.
Dabi’s involvement in Darfur began in 1999, four years before the region would explode in the violence that Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled as “genocide.” Darfur was descending into war between the Arab and Masalit communities — the same fault line that would widen into a bloodier interethnic war in a few years’ time. As the situation escalated out of control, Bashir sent Dabi to Darfur to restore order.
According to Julie Flint and Alex De Waal’s Darfur: A New History of a Long War, Dabi arrived in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, on Feb. 9, 1999, with two helicopter gunships and 120 soldiers. He would stay until the end of June. During this time, he would make an enemy of the Masalit governor of West Sudan. Flint and De Waal write:
Governor Ibrahim Yahya describes the period as ‘the beginning of the organization of the Janjawiid‘, with [Arab] militia leaders like Hamid Dawai and Shineibat receiving money from the government for the first time. ‘The army would search and disarm villages, and two days later the Janjawiid would go in.They would attack and loot from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., only ten minutes away from the army. By this process all of Dar Masalit was burned.’ Read the rest of this entry »
The Roman Gate 