Bleeding Sudan

As the Khartoum government grapples with the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the United States and the U.K. up the ante in the battle against Sudan for political and economic reasons.

DARFUR, in western Sudan, has been plagued by armed clashes between various groups over land and water resources for decades. The Sudan government did not have either the time or the resources to deal with the simmering crisis; preoccupied as it was with the more serious conflict in the south of the country. The political vacuum in Darfur was exploited by rapacious groups like the "Janjaweed". The unfolding humanitarian tragedy in Darfur was also sparked off by prolonged clashes between various warring groups in February last year. The fighting has escalated steadily since then. Entire villages, belonging mainly to the pastoralists, have been razed, farmland and livestock seized. The United Nations estimates that more than a million people in the region have been forced to flee to cities or seek refuge in neighbouring Chad. According to the U.N. aid agencies, around 49 per cent of the refugees are suffering from hunger. Another 67 per cent of the refugees do not have access to potable water. The majority of the refugees also lack proper sanitation facilities.

The plight of the refugees has worsened with the onset of the rainy season in July. The supply of much-needed food and medicine has now become even more difficult. The World Health Organisation officials are predicting an outbreak of an epidemic such as cholera and warned that the situation "was getting out of control".

In September last year, the Sudanese government and the main rebel force in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), had actually signed an agreement allowing "free and unhindered humanitarian access" within the region for the U.N. and other international agencies. However, a convoy of trucks carrying relief supplies was ambushed by the rebels a month later. Nine truck drivers were killed in the incident. The U.N. reported in January this year that 85 per cent of the relief supplies could not be reached to 85 per cent of those displaced by the current upsurge in fighting because of "insecurity". The government of Sudan has pledged to cooperate with the U.N. agencies in tacking the humanitarian aspect of the Darfur problem despite its reservations about the latest Security Council resolution.

THE government of Sudan had hoped that the sustained pressure that the West has put on it for the last several decades would ease after it signed the landmark peace agreement with the guerillas from the south of the country in May.

Sudan has been under intense pressure from the West since 1989, when President Omar Al Bashir came to power with the help of Islamists. But, in the late-1990s he managed to purge the government of the Islamists and started negotiations with John Garang, the leader of the main southern rebel force, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). In fact, Sudan became an ally of Washington in the "war against terror". Important files regarding Al Qaeda were handed over to Washington by the Sudanese authorities. Incidently, Osama bin Laden was given asylum by Sudan for a few years in the mid-1990s. The motley group of rebels in Darfur were not a source of great concern to the authorities in Khartoum until recently.

The rebels, however, got a fillip when the government was on the verge of giving significant concessions to the separatists in the south. Even before the ink could dry up on the peace agreement with the southern rebels, Darfur suddenly came under the international spotlight.

Speaking to Frontline, Sudan's Ambassador to India Abdel Haleem Mohammad said that the problem in Darfur is basically a fight for "scarce resources" between nomadic tribes and the settled pastoralist in an arid region, a fight made worse by a prolonged drought in the region. "Looting has become a way of survival for some people in Darfur. Besides there are a lot of arms floating around in the region," he said.

Darfur shares a long border with the Republic of Chad, which has witnessed prolonged civil wars since the 1970s. Only since the mid-1990s has a semblance of normalcy returned to the country, which remains under French influence. France has a big military base in Chad and is wary of Washington's game plan to internationalise the Darfur problem.

Mohammad pointed out that the government in Khartoum has traditionally enjoyed good relations with the government in Chad. The various tribes that inhabit Darfur form the majority in Chad. The President of Chad is from an ethnic group that is predominantly in the Darfur region of Sudan. According to the Ambassador, the accusations that the fight in Darfur is between Arabs and non-Arabs are off the mark. He said: "All Darfurians are Blacks as well as Muslims." Abdel Mohammad blamed Washington and London for exacerbating the situation. According to him, the U.S. administration tries to portray the events in Darfur as a conflict between "Blacks and Arabs" because of President George Bush's eagerness to court African American voters in the presidential election. Abdel Mohammad is critical particularly of the United Kingdom, which according to him, still regrets its inability to partition out Sudan before its independence.

SUDAN has not denied the existence of a "humanitarian" problem in Darfur. According to Abdel Mohammad, the Sudanese government is trying its best to help the people of Darfur, in spite of the difficult logistical and financial problems. He said that other parts of country have also been affected by the drought. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, after his visit to the Darfur refugee camp in mid-July, had appealed to the international community for help. The U.N. agencies have jointly appealed for $349.5 million as aid for the region but the international community has been able to cough up only around 40 per cent of the amount so far.

According to the U.N. agencies, around 1.1 million people in Darfur have been displaced from their homes. Darfur, which is divided into three States, has a population of around six million. It is the size of France and Belgium combined. It has some 80 tribes and ethnic groups. According to Abdel Mohammad, during the period of prolonged drought many armed groups have proliferated in the region, known as the "janjaweed". "They (the Janjaweed) are not an Arab group but have representatives from all the tribes in Darfur," he said.

Sudanese officials say that some Western non-governmental organisations are dissuading refugees from returning to their homes in areas where normalcy has been restored. According to them there is a deeper conspiracy behind the efforts to censure Sudan. The Security Council had on July 30 adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution demanding that Sudan disarm and prosecute the armed militias such as the notorious Janjaweed. China and Pakistan abstained. China had threatened to veto the resolution because the West wanted "sanctions" to be imposed on Sudan immediately. China and Pakistan also said that the Sudanese government is trying to reign in the militias, which have been accused of slaughter, rape and pillage. The July 30 resolution has a reference only to a section of the U.N. charter, which allows punitive measures to be adopted against any nation that does not comply with a U.N. resolution. Russia, China and the developing countries represented in the Security Council had objected strongly to the original U.S.-sponsored draft, arguing that its passage would constitute a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country'. Abdel Mohammad said that sanctions against his country would impact adversely on the relief efforts under way in Darfur.

THE Sudanese government expressed its "deep sorrow that the issue of Darfur has quickly entered the Security Council and has been hijacked from the regional arena". Khartoum had earlier agreed to mediation by the African Union (A.U.). President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Chairman of the A.U., is also against the internationalisation of the issue. He was angry with the attitude of the Darfur rebels for having sent low-ranking representatives to the peace talks in Addis Ababa in early July. Obasanjo has since announced that his government would send around 300 troops to supervise the ceasefire and the distribution of relief to the refugees. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit has also said that one of the ways to end the conflict in Darfur "is to work through the African Union". The British government had in early July threatened to send its troops to Darfur. The Sudanese government has warned that any such move could lead to the fragmentation of Sudan and destabilise the nine countries with which it shares borders.

The Darfur rebel leadership has been given refuge by the Eritrean government, known for its proximity to the U.S. and Israel. Most of the African countries blame the Darfur rebels for the breakdown of the talks.

President Omar Al Bashir has accused "foreign powers" of conspiring to destabilise his country. He said that the moment peace returned in the south, the foreign powers started a war in the west of the country, "exploiting a crisis which has been fabricated in the first place". The Sudanese President did not deny that problems existed in Darfur. He, however, denied strongly that the Sudanese government backed the Janjaweed tribal militias that have been committing the atrocities in Darfur. Al Bashir pointed out that his government had made huge concessions to secure the peace in the south and that it did not make sense for the government to start another war in the west of the country.

THE violence in Darfur started in the early 1990s, when a rebel grouping aligned with the SPLA. The two armed movements active in Darfur are the Movement of Justice and Equality (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). The SLA is the more active of the two groups and is identified with the Zaghawa tribe that straddles both sides of the Chad-Sudan border. The two groups, no doubt encouraged by the concessions extracted by the SPLA in the south from the central government, have asked for greater decentralisation and a share in the country's wealth. Neighbouring Chad has emerged as a big oil producer in the past decade. Sudanese officials say that Darfur is "floating in oil", which is coveted by the big Western oil companies.

In fact, many observers of the African scene are convinced that renewed Western efforts at destabilising the government in Khartoum has a lot to do with the Bush administration's desire to monopolise Africa's natural resources. The incessant rebellion in Iraq has cast doubts on the continued and uninterrupted flow of oil from West Asia. American oil firms have already got into Africa in a big way. They are even doing good business with some African governments that have abysmal human rights records. Abdel Mohammed said: "At the micro level the conflict is over scarce resources between nomads and farmers. At the macro level, the conflict is between the West and Sudan over energy resources."