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As the genocide in Darfur goes on, chaos and killing spread to Sudan's neighbours
It has been called a genocide in slow motion, its gruesome details unfolding while the world looks the other way. And it is spreading.
There are pictures, there are witness accounts, there are the Western visitors who go home with harrowing tales of rape, scorched earth and horseback attacks on helpless villagers.
Yet, three years after the beginning of the Sudanese government crackdown against black African rebels, killing more than 70,000 people and displacing two million others through its allied Arab militias, the world is still wringing its hands while Sudan's western region burns.
A UN force for Darfur is still in the planning stages, an attempt to punish Sudanese leaders with sanctions has been blocked, and relief agencies have been denied access to 300,000 people desperately in need of emergency supplies.
"It's a big failure for the international community," said the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres. But the poison from Darfur threatens to engulf the entire central African region.
Chadian rebel attempts to overthrow President Idriss Déby in lightning strikes launched from across the border in Darfur last week have brought accusations that the Sudanese government was behind the insurgency. Chinese-made equipment - China is a major oil client of Khartoum and its diplomatic ally - seized by the Chadian army fuelled the charges which Khartoum has denied.
According to Mr Guterres, the Chad fighting, which also involved the Central African Republic, means that "Darfur is the epicentre of what could be potentially a very damaging earthquake in the whole region." A total 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to camps in Chad.
Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, based in northern Uganda, send fighters into Central African Republic, and into Democratic Republic of Congo and are complicating efforts to return refugees into southern Sudan, according to Mr Guterres. The regional crisis could further worsen if Ethiopia and Eritrea rekindle their border war.
"I do believe this has the potential to become the most dramatic humanitarian catastrophe in the world," Mr Guterres told The Independent.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article359112.ece
Yet, three years after the beginning of the Sudanese government crackdown against black African rebels, killing more than 70,000 people and displacing two million others through its allied Arab militias, the world is still wringing its hands while Sudan's western region burns.
A UN force for Darfur is still in the planning stages, an attempt to punish Sudanese leaders with sanctions has been blocked, and relief agencies have been denied access to 300,000 people desperately in need of emergency supplies.
"It's a big failure for the international community," said the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres. But the poison from Darfur threatens to engulf the entire central African region.
Chadian rebel attempts to overthrow President Idriss Déby in lightning strikes launched from across the border in Darfur last week have brought accusations that the Sudanese government was behind the insurgency. Chinese-made equipment - China is a major oil client of Khartoum and its diplomatic ally - seized by the Chadian army fuelled the charges which Khartoum has denied.
According to Mr Guterres, the Chad fighting, which also involved the Central African Republic, means that "Darfur is the epicentre of what could be potentially a very damaging earthquake in the whole region." A total 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to camps in Chad.
Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, based in northern Uganda, send fighters into Central African Republic, and into Democratic Republic of Congo and are complicating efforts to return refugees into southern Sudan, according to Mr Guterres. The regional crisis could further worsen if Ethiopia and Eritrea rekindle their border war.
"I do believe this has the potential to become the most dramatic humanitarian catastrophe in the world," Mr Guterres told The Independent.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article359112.ece
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Last weekend, forces of the Chadian armed opposition group, the United Front for Change, better known for its French acronym FUC, stormed the country's capital Ndjamena. Fierce battles erupted around the parliament building in the northeastern part of the city. The first sign of serious trouble was a complete breakdown of communications. Ndjamena's mobile phone network went down last Wednesday. The Chadian capital was plunged in total darkness.
And as in any war zone where chaos and catastrophe loom, there was much consternation over the precise identity of the attackers. French troops took up positions near key Chadian government and French interests buildings. The premeditated attack on Ndjamena, the capital of the impoverished African nation by insurgents based in Sudan's war- torn westernmost province of Darfur, is a mystery because of what it is not. It is neither a tribal squabble nor a coup d'état. Historically, governments in landlocked Chad fell when the capital was over-run by armies based in neighbouring countries.
The Chadian authorities claim that 60 per cent of the FUC troops are Sudanese nationals, mercenaries from Darfur. The opposition strongly denies this.
It is not hard to see how he usurped power in the first place. His army crossed into the country from Darfur and ousted the government of the former Chadian strongman Hissene Habre.
France, the former colonial master of Chad, and most other Western nations seem to prefer Deby to any conceivable alternative. Plenty of African and Western leaders are reluctant to criticise Deby, and there are clear reasons for their queasiness. Many Chadians, on the other hand, are strongly opposed to his rule. His iron grip on power, buttressed by French military hegemony over the country and oil revenues, alienated large segments of the population, including members of his own Zaghawa ethnic group.
More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/791/in1.htm