Think-tank calls for more effort to resolve Darfur crisis

The situation in the troubled region of Darfur is a threat to peace throughout Sudan and unless the international community exerts more effort to resolve it, the conflict could spread, adversely affecting neighbouring countries, the International Crisis Group (ICG) warned on Monday.

In a statement titled: "Darfur deadline: A new international action plan", the ICG said the international response to the Darfur crisis "remains limp and inadequate, its achievements so far desperately slight".

The ICG urged the United Nations Security Council to "endorse a new international action plan, taking tougher measures against the Khartoum government...authorising the African Union (AU), with stronger international support, to follow up more decisively its efforts to improve the situation on the ground and mediate a political settlement".

It was not immediately possible to get a comment from the Sudanese government on the ICG report, but Khartoum strongly denies backing militias who are accused of committing atrocities against civilians in Darfur. It has also promised to disarm them.

On Tuesday, the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who visited a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur, said Khartoum had made progress on humanitarian access and security within the camps.

"What I shall be saying to [Sudanese] President [Omar] al-Bashir ... is that we recognise that the government of Sudan has made progress in greatly improving humanitarian access and also in terms of safety and security of people in the camps," the BBC quoted Straw as saying.

However the BBC quoted Straw as adding: "But talking to people here, it is very clear [they] are still very anxious, apprehensive and nervous about whether they will be safe to go back to the villages from where they have come."

The UN said in a report issued on Monday that more police had been deployed in North Darfur and the situation in Kalma and Kass IDP camps in South Darfur had stabilised following an increased police presence. It added that relief agencies had reported more police officers being flown to Al-Geneina in West Darfur.

The ICG noted: "The situation in Darfur constitutes a direct and growing threat to peace prospects in Sudan's 21-year-old civil war and to the chance for one of Africa's largest and potentially richest countries to hold together. Unless much more is done quickly, on both the humanitarian and peace fronts, not only will many tens of thousands more die, but instability will spread, impacting Sudan's neighbours."

It said the 30 July Security Council resolution had "placed an essentially meaningless arms embargo on Janjawid militias who have caused so much havoc and the rebels alike, but directed no measures at the Sudanese government for whom the Janjawid have acted as a proxy and left officials in Khartoum confident they could continue indefinitely to deflect pressure to resolve the crisis".

"The international community must do much more about the interconnected problems of humanitarian relief and security on the ground," the ICG noted. "As many as two million civilians in Darfur need emergency aid, but many are not receiving it because of bottlenecks created by the government and, to a lesser extent, the rebels."

Calling for more logistics, funding, personnel and transport equipment for relief agencies, the ICG noted that the AU's response to the crisis had been "increasingly energetic".

"The Darfur situation poses an ever greater threat to the nearly finalised peace agreement to end the larger and older civil war between the government and the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)," the ICG said.

"As long as Darfur festers, the chance remains for political forces in Khartoum opposed to the concessions that have been made in that negotiation to turn government policy back toward war. There is also less prospect that a final agreement with the SPLA, even if signed, could be implemented, or that there would be the necessary support in the West to provide both sides the help they need to make that agreement work," it added

Ahead of Straw's visit, the British charity, Oxfam, had urged him "to do all he can to bring an end to the violence in Darfur".

"Straw's visit shows commitment to addressing the continuing crisis in Darfur. But diplomacy and promises are not enough. The people he meets in the camps will have high hopes that his visit will help end the violence that pushed them from their homes," Jasmine Whitbread, Oxfam's International Director, said in a statement.

"We urge Jack Straw to use his visit to ensure the international community does all it can to end the violence once and for all. Time is running out for the people of Darfur," Whitbread added.

The Darfur conflict erupted early last year when two rebel groups in Darfur took up arms against the government, accussing it of marginalising the region. Khartoum armed Arab militias known as Janjawid to help it fight the rebels. But the militias have instead been accused of pillaging villages and maiming, killing and raping civilians.

The UN has said that the violence in Darfur has created "the world's worst humanitarian crisis", with about 200,000 refugees fleeing in neighbouring Chad and more than one million others displaced inside Sudan.

The ICG report is available at www.crisisweb.org