Lady Victoria Eclectic Pagan's blog: "Darfur News"

* The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement Secretary General Pagan Amum said "what is happening today in Darfur is ethnic cleansing and genocide." * The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there has been a 150 percent increase in attacks against humanitarian workers in the last year. * Envoys from the United Nations, the United States and the African Union are meeting with key players in Darfur in efforts to speed up the political process to bring peace to Darfur. Situation on the Ground The Sudanese People's Liberation Movement Secretary General Pagan Amum said "what is happening today in Darfur is ethnic cleansing and genocide," criticizing President Omar al-Bashir's remark that only 9,000 have been killed. President Omar al-Bashir 'relieved' the governor of South Darfur from his position and replaced him with the former state minister of finance who was a member of the Sudanese government during the Darfur peace talks of 2006. At a meeting with new AU peacekeeping commander Gen. Martin Agwai, Bashir reaffirmed his support of AU forces in Darfur. After investigating the fate of funding for Darfur, the European Union discovered AU forces have not been paying their soldiers for stretches of several months; the AU blamed the delays on administrative problems. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there has been a 150 percent increase of attacks in the last year against a now 13,000-strong force of relief workers. The UN Environment Programme verified that environmental degradation and climate change are important factors in the Darfur conflict. As the humanitarian community responds to the flash floods expected in three days, the International Committee of the Red Cross is drawing attention to two areas that may not be able to withstand the weather changes, Tawila and Gereida. Malnutrition persists in refugee camps in Eastern Chad, according to UNICEF, as refugees remain displaced by cross-border raids of the Janjaweed and the emerging violence of Chadian rebels. In the Central African Republic, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees set up a school for 600 children, building waterproof sheds, and sending another 51-ton food convoy to the impoverished Sam Ouandja refugee camp. Chadian Arabs are beginning to face physical and social discrimination as some groups have now come to associate "Arab" with "Janjaweed." "Living in Israel has become a dream for so many Sudanese families who have fled Darfur for Egypt," said one refugee; many refugees from Darfur continuing to seek refuge in Israel via "desert runs" across Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. This exodus has triggered strict Egyptian border patrols. Humanitarian aid groups like DanChurchAid reach out to tens of thousands of refugees by providing access to clean water and teaching sanitation and hygiene practices. Other groups are bringing midwives and other medical services to Darfur in attempt to lower mortality rates; about 1 in 58 women die in childbirth in Sudan, the fifth highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and a staggering 15 percent infant mortality rate also plagues the country. New kitchen stoves, invented by a Berkeley, Calif., physicist, are expected to alleviate some of the burdens of cooking for Darfurians. The Peace Process US Special Envoy Andrew Natsios began his seven-day visit to Sudan during which he plans to hold meetings with local Darfur government officials and leaders of rebel movements; also in Sudan are two other special envoys, Jan Eliasson, representing the UN, and Salim Ahmed Salim, representing the African Union. While the Eliasson thinks that the "moment of truth" is nearing for negotiations in Darfur, the slow progress and fighting between rebel organizations suggests envoys may fail to launch these peace talks. Leaders from the Democratic Unionist Party from Egypt and the SPLM met in Cairo to discuss implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the resolution of the Darfur conflict. Religious leaders at an international Christian-Muslim conference addressing the "Sustainability of Peace and Consolidation of National Unity" called for anti-genocide dialogue in Sudanese education in order to achieve permanent peace in the future. International Action The Scottish government is contributing £250,000 to help victims of the violence in Darfur; the government previously supported educational initiatives in South Sudan with a £190,000 donation. Columnist Julie Flint cautioned Democratic presidential candidates, particularly Sen. Hillary Clinton, about advocating for no-fly zones, given the potential consequences to humanitarian forces in Darfur. Nat Hentoff commended French President Nicolas Sarkozy for taking action. Eric Reeves criticized UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for "taking comfort" in "slow but credible and considerable progress" in Darfur saying that Ban's actions are not nearly enough. Mehari Taddele Maru, former legal expert of the African Union Commission, argued that the framework for dealing with Darfur needs to shift to a more inclusive view of the whole conflict in Sudan, to adopt a "root-cause approach" rather than a "symptom-focused approach." With hordes of calls for change pre-2008 Olympics in Chinese internal and external policy, the only issue China has responded to is Darfur. Bill Sanders, marketing adviser to high profile clients including NBA star Greg Oden, encouraged players to "go with your heart" when it comes to initiatives like Darfur petitions — but said that in the case of the Olympics, "embarrassment I don't think works in China." For more information, please copy and paste the following source: http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/darfurnews/ Thank You! 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July 6, 2007 By JULIE FLINT Beirut, Lebanon THE one bright light in the dismal international response to the slaughter and starvation in Sudan’s Darfur region has been a humanitarian effort that has kept more than two million displaced people alive. In the fifth year of the war, mortality levels among Darfurians reached by relief are marginally better than they were before the war and lower than in the capital, Khartoum. In South Sudan, where conflict is stilled, children have higher death rates and lower school enrollment. This is a formidable achievement, better than in any comparable war zone in Africa. Credit the likes of Oxfam, Mercy Corps and Doctors Without Borders, and their 13,000-strong army of relief workers — 90 percent of them Sudanese. Yet these successes will be lost if Democratic presidential candidates get their wish: a no-flight zone that is militarily enforced over Darfur. The idea, supported by Senator Hillary Clinton and others, is that this would pressure the Sudan government into allowing the immediate deployment of a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. “If they fly into it, we will shoot down their planes,” Mrs. Clinton said last week at a Democratic presidential debate. “It is the only way to get their attention.” Aid agencies are quietly appalled by the prospect of a no-flight zone. They believe Khartoum would respond by grounding humanitarian aircraft and, at worst, by forcing aid agencies to leave. Even if Khartoum didn’t ground flights, the United Nations most likely would, for fear of sending its planes into a potential combat zone. Without humanitarian air access, Darfurians would soon suffer lethal health and food crises. In the event of heightened military activity on the ground, Darfurians would be caught in the crossfire. The people of Kosovo and Bosnia had easier access to neighboring host countries. Darfur is vast and dry. Its people would not be able to flee to safety easily. Today, as Khartoum’s janjaweed militias turn against each other, rebel movements fragment and banditry rages, millions of Darfurians who depend on humanitarian assistance can be reached only by air. United Nations and African Union traffic accounts for 9 of every 10 flights in Darfur. Some agencies deliver as much as 90 percent of their supplies using aircraft. The collapse of the humanitarian apparatus would be a death sentence for Darfurians, especially those in camps who rely on aid agencies for food, clean water and shelter. Proposing a no-flight zone is an easy sound bite for presidential hopefuls eager to harness the grassroots support enjoyed by the Save Darfur Coalition, the advocacy movement that has kept Darfur in the spotlight but that has also, unfortunately, used its position to call for a no-flight zone. But enforcing one would be a phenomenal challenge. Darfur is bigger than Iraq and nearly 50 times larger than Kosovo. The nearest airfields in Chad are a vast distance from any NATO base. A no-flight zone would do little or nothing to address the reality that the greatest threat to civilians in Darfur today comes on the ground — not from the air. The number of civilians killed by air attacks this year in Darfur is in the dozens. Yes, it’s a shocking crime for a government to bombard its own citizens. But it’s simply wrong to say, as Mrs. Clinton did during a speech last week in Washington, that American action should be “focused on the air support the Sudanese provide to the janjaweed as they rape and pillage their way through villages.” Mrs. Clinton is reading from an outdated script. During the height of the conflict in 2003-4, the worst violence in Darfur was caused by coordinated ground and air attacks against villages accused of supporting the rebels. But this year it has been caused by battles on the ground between Arab militias fighting one another over land and by attacks by rebels now aligned with the government. Not once this year has there been aerial bombing “before, during and after” these offensives, as Mrs. Clinton claimed. Today, stopping military flights wouldn’t make much of a difference to the Darfurian people. Khartoum claims that international aid organizations are agents of hostile Western governments whose ultimate goal is regime change. Already, threats of coercive military action are giving oxygen to regime hard-liners. A military strike during enforcement of a no-flight zone would most likely hand President Omar Hassan al-Bashir the same kind of propaganda victory he scored when American cruise missiles knocked out a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in 1998. The United States should step back from confrontational rhetoric and empty threats. Instead, it should support efforts to mend rebel divisions and encourage new peace talks that are not tied to artificial deadlines. It should push for strengthened monitoring and public reporting of hostile flights, as envisaged under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1591, and take the lead to develop an international consensus for effective actions to change the situation where it would really make a difference — on the ground. The overstretched African Union peacekeepers need to be strengthened immediately, with a new mandate that authorizes them to protect the camps for the displaced. The humanitarian’s first obligation is to do no harm. Talk of coercive military action must end. A no-flight zone would be recklessly dangerous and would not address the real problems in Darfur. To endanger the region’s humanitarian lifeline is not simply wrong-headed. It is inhumane. Julie Flint is the co-author of “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War.”