AU: Sudan bombs the people of Darfur

KHARTOUM, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Sudan has bombed Darfur rebel areas, a day after African Union officials visited the insurgents and secured their commitment to a ceasefire, an AU statement said on Sunday.

Luke Aprezi commands a 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur which, hampered by lack of equipment and funds, has struggled to stem the violence in remote west Sudan. The fighting has driven 2.5 million people from their homes and killed an estimated 200,000.

"For the first time I visited them (rebels) in the field in Um Rai (North Darfur) ... and I was able to get a ceasefire commitment from them," Aprezi told Reuters. The meeting was held two days ago and he notified the government of it, he said.

"Unfortunately (Sudan's army) went and bombed the area and it looks like I led them to the area to get bombed," he said. Read more >>>

Sudan says no to peacekeeping force in Darfur

Sudan has rejected a plea by departing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Annan, in a final appearance before the Security Council, urged envoys to keep pressure on Khartoum to accept a blue-helmeted peacekeeping mission.

Sudanese U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Wednesday poured cold water on Secretary General Annan's hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough in his last days in office.

Earlier, Mr. Annan briefed the council on a letter he received from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accepting a three-phase approach for ending the violence in Darfur. The secretary-general said he was encouraged that the three-phase plan would end with deployment of a hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The Security Council has authorized a 22,000-strong blue-helmeted force to replace a badly understaffed 7,000 troops in the A.U. mission.

But Ambassador Abdalhaleem said flatly Sudan would not accept U.N. peacekeepers.

He said 'There is no blue helmet peacekeepers in Darfur. There is support, logistical support staff by the United Nations, wearing their own helmets. But they are not going to engage in peacekeeping activities.' Read more >>>

Darfur: Violence displaces more civilians in Darfur

A village destroyed by militias during a past raid

Thousands of people have gone into hiding in hills near the North Darfur village of Abu Sakin after Arab militias continued their destructive rampage across parts of the western Sudanese region, aid workers said.

A United Nations assessment mission on Saturday found the village of Abu Sakin completely deserted and looted. More than 50 houses had been burnt to the ground to discourage the villagers from returning there. Read more >>>

Darfur: The hidden holocaust continues

Ben Macintyre in Khartoum

Atrocities in Darfur have forced more than two million people from their homes, but the Red Cross maintains that the hidden holocaust can be halted with foreign aid and the determination of refugees

Deep in the arid deserts of Darfur, the hidden holocaust continues. This man-made humanitarian disaster is largely invisible because the Sudanese Government has banned journalists from the region; it is, as yet, unstoppable, because Khartoum has refused to allow in UN peacekeepers; its scale is virtually incalculable, with estimates of the dead ranging from 200,000 to double that number, and more than two million forced from their homes.
But the horror of Darfur is not untreatable. Read more >>>

U.S. must take role in salvaging Darfur

Despite the news last week that the African Union will remain in Darfur, the world holds its breath as the Sudanese government escalates its military offensive there.

Hope for Darfur rests on the implementation of the United Nations resolution authorizing a U.N. peacekeeping force with a mandate to protect civilians. Yet the Sudanese government continues to veto the international responsibility to protect, denying consent for the deployment of peacekeepers.

The linchpin to break the deadlock on Darfur continues to be the United States, which has special leverage with all stakeholders.

While President Bush has been on record in support of a U.N. intervention, the United States has failed to do the required diplomatic heavy lifting. Rhetoric won't change the reality >>> Read more >>>

'Hotel Rwanda' star shines light on Darfur

BY TINA DAUNT

The call came shortly after Don Cheadle caught the attention of the world with his Oscar-nominated performance in the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda.

U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who serves on the House's Africa subcommittee, saw the movie about the Rwandan genocide and wanted to tell the actor that something similar was happening in the Darfur region of Sudan.

''He said that he believed the film had similar echoes and resonance to what was happening in Darfur,'' recalled Cheadle, in a recent interview at the United Nations, where he and fellow actor George Clooney were lobbying on behalf of the war-torn region of Africa. Read more >>>

Darfur Humanitarian Operations Now in "Meltdown" Phase

By: Eric Reeves

Relief work in Eastern Chad is also experiencing what UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres calls a “meltdown”; the international response continues to be a dilatory and disingenuous charade with Khartoum’s génocidaires about a “peacekeeping” force

The security crisis confronting humanitarian operations in Darfur and eastern Chad has deepened dangerously in the past several weeks. A new level of violence and brazen attacks on aid workers has produced large-scale evacuations of many hundreds of personnel, both Sudanese and expatriate. Complete lawlessness is rampant. Perhaps only half of Darfur has any humanitarian access, and much of this is highly compromised by the difficulty of overland transport.

Virtually the same conditions of extreme insecurity prevail in eastern Chad, where some 500,000 conflict-affected persons also face a severe attenuation of humanitarian access. A conflict-affected population of some 4.5 million human beings in the greater humanitarian theater has now been reduced to watching helplessly as aid operations---even the most critical---are suspended or halted altogether. A series of extended confidential conversations with senior officials, representing a range of humanitarian organizations on the ground in Darfur, makes clear that despite the courage and commitment that presently sustain relief efforts, the possibility of wholesale evacuations is perilously close.

If humanitarian organizations do withdraw entirely, or are continually more restricted in their movements, there will be no witnesses to the next act of genocidal destruction: the assault upon or bulldozing of Darfur’s camps for the displaced. Read more >>>

Perpetual suffering of the people of Darfur in 21st century