Sudán (Continuación)

MundoÁfrica,

The apparent failure of Sudan to block the formal indictment of its president for war crimes is threatening to plunge the country into renewed internal conflict, provoke a break with the UN and end cooperation of African Union countries with the international criminal court.

Tribunal judges are expected to rule within the next two months on a request by the international criminal court chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, for an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir concerning war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide allegedly committed in Darfur. Although action on the most serious allegation of genocide may be deferred, the other charges are almost certain to go ahead.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaMundoAsia, , , , ,

When you put the Olympics in the hands of a dictatorship, the results are predictable. Yet the Chinese government still found a way to surprise even its critics -- not so much by behaving oppressively but by doing so in a foolish and entirely unnecessary way.

By revoking the visa of 2006 Olympian Joey Cheek at the very last moment because he had the nerve to speak out about Darfur and the Chinese government's support for Sudan's barbarous regime, Chinese authorities guaranteed that the opening of these Games would focus as much on politics as on sports. The burden now is not on China's critics but on its government.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, ,

Justifying his move this week to seek an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, the international criminal court's prosecutor, said: "I don't have the luxury to look away. I have the evidence." It was a characteristic riposte from Luis Moreno-Ocampo to a barrage of warnings last weekend that the prosecutor should not interfere with the difficult situation in Darfur and damage any last chances of a peace deal (not that in four years Bashir has ever attended the Darfur peace talks). In fact, the ICC has less room for political manoeuvre than its critics allege. That may yet prove its greatest strength.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, ,

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has made the tough decision to seek an arrest warrant for a leader of a country at war — Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. He is to be charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the last five years of war in Darfur.

One has to go back to the cases against Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia in 1999 and Charles Taylor of Liberia in 2003 to find the last time that international prosecutors charged a sitting head of state. Then, as now, they were criticized for failing to take “politics” into account.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, ,

Opinions differ widely about the likely impact of the genocide charges filed today against Sudan's leader, Omar al-Bashir, in the international criminal court.

Sombre predictions of political collapse, escalating violence, and the fragmentation of Africa's largest country contrast starkly with the more complacent view that in the medium term, nothing very much will change.

This uncertainty of perception reflects the muddled and contradictory character of the international community's response to the Darfur crisis that erupted in 2003 and to Sudan's numerous other problems, notably continuing north-south tensions and its ongoing dispute with Chad. It also reflects serious question marks surrounding the ICC itself.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, ,

My name is Halima. I come from a warlike black African tribe, the Zaghawa, who inhabit the southern Darfur region of Sudan. But I live as a refugee in London, and it is the horrors of the war in Darfur that drove me from my homeland, scattering my family to the four corners of the Earth.

In the year of my birth, 1979, my father named me Halima, after the medicine woman of our village. It was a prophetic naming. My father was a rich man and determined that I be educated. He believed that it was the only way that we black African Sudanese would break free of the Arab domination of our country.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Is the International Criminal Court losing its way in Darfur? We fear it is. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's approach is fraught with risk -- for the victims of the atrocities in Darfur, for the prospects for peace in Sudan and for the prosecution itself.

We are worried by two aspects of Ocampo's approach, as presented to the U.N. Security Council early this month. One concerns fact: Sudan's government has committed heinous crimes, but Ocampo's comparison of it with Nazi Germany is an exaggeration. The other concerns political consequences: Indicting a senior government figure would be an immense symbolic victory for Darfurians.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Sudan's National Islamic Front regime has begun its sixth year of genocidal counterinsurgency warfare in the vast western region of Darfur, targeting African civilian populations perceived as the primary support for fractious rebel groups. Given the length of the conflict, news reports have inevitably taken on a grimly familiar and repetitive character that obscures the impending cataclysm of human destruction.

Without significant improvement in security on the ground -- for civilians and the humanitarians upon whom they increasingly depend -- deaths in the coming months will reach a staggering total. What Khartoum was unable to accomplish with the massive violence of 2003-04, entailing wholesale destruction of African villages, will be achieved through a "genocide by attrition."…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Despite almost 1.5 million bombing sorties flown against Germany during the Second World War, the United States and Britain failed for lack of trying to destroy the system of transport that fed the gas chambers and crematoria. Thirty-five years later, America did not, despite its unquestioned naval supremacy, protect the Vietnamese boat people. That we and our two allies capable of projecting power, France and Britain, are now distracted and divided by the wars in the Middle East is terribly unfortunate for the people of Darfur.

The genocide there is thus an unattended stepchild left to well-meaning groups and individuals who further sap the possibility of decisive action by directing attention to delicate measures of relief and equally fragile diplomacy.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Dozens of sun-bleached photographs adorn the walls of the governor's office in al-Fashir, the back-of-beyond capital of north Darfur state. They show Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, a worried-looking Jack Straw and many other celebrities.

Since Darfur's problems grabbed the world's attention in 2003, Usman Mohammad Yusif Kabir, the governor or "wali", has received no fewer than 415 foreign delegations from the UN, the US, the EU, the African Union (AU) and concerned governments and organisations.

North Darfur alone currently hosts 12 UN agencies, 29 international NGOs and 58 local relief organisations, Kabir says. It is also a base for AU and UN peacekeepers whose numbers are set to swell to 26,000.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

On a recent trip to Rwanda, I visited a humble memorial -- the bullet-marked corner of a room with 10 candles arranged in an arc on the floor. It is the site where 10 U.N. peacekeepers from Belgium were executed early in the 1994 genocide. The architects of that genocide calculated that an early atrocity against foreign troops would cause all of them to run. And run they did.

Almost 14 years later, the international community faces a different kind of test. On Jan. 1, the United Nations, in cooperation with the African Union, will take control of peacekeeping operations in the Darfur region of Sudan, where more than 200,000 are dead in a genocide and about 2 million have been forced into refugee camps.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Gillian Gibbons, the “teddy bear teacher”, has given us a primary school lesson on the politics of Sudan. The story went something like this: “Mad mullahs” jail innocent teacher. British Muslim peers ride to the rescue. The President issues a pardon. Our girl is rescued and everyone lives happily ever after.

Two days after the release of Ms Gibbons, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, delivered a degree-level lecture on the criminal nature of the Sudanese Government to the UN Security Council. With a professorial air and staccato-speaking style he laid out the charges against Sudan, one after the other, each one outrageous to anyone unfamiliar with the five-year history of the Darfur crisis.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Three years have passed since the British government, in the form of Jack Straw, declared states of affairs in both Darfur and Zimbabwe “unacceptable”. A year later in the case of Darfur this was upgraded to “completely unacceptable”. A feelgood Global Day for Darfur was declared, helped on its way by George Clooney and Elton John. Needless to say, the government accepted what was unacceptable – and has done so ever since.

Today Gordon Brown has decided to stay in bed rather than go to the European Union's Africa summit in Lisbon, thus avoiding the improbable risk of having to smile at Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe or Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese dictator.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

Murder, arson and rape do not suffice as weapons in Sudan's campaign against the civilians of Darfur. Khartoum also plays the race card to block outsiders from coming to Darfur's rescue.

No, Sudan's rulers have no shame in pursuing what since 2004 the U.S. government has labeled and tolerated as "genocide." And they now have few obstacles left to crushing resistance in the rebellious western province, where conflict and atrocity have left nearly half a million people dead and displaced 2 million more, according to the United Nations.

Give these all-too-human devils their due: By lying, stalling and relying on a warped sense of racial solidarity both with Arab countries and post-colonial African nations, the Sudanese have kept the initiative and kept the world off balance.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica

Forget Darfur for a moment. Think of Sudan's other civil war, the conflict between north and south, which seemed, until recently, to be under control. If the highest credible death toll in the Darfur war is about 200,000, the north-south war is estimated to have taken seven times as many lives.A peace deal under international mediation was signed two years ago. A government of national unity was set up in which former rebel leaders from Christian and animist backgrounds joined ranks with Arab Muslim generals and politicians in Khartoum, pending national elections in 2009.

If peace could be made after so much bloodshed and between people from such different traditions, how much less difficult ought it to be to get peace in Darfur?…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaEuropaUnión Europea, ,

Today is moral maze day again at the Home Office. Actually, so is every day, but today the show moves to the House of Lords in a case involving three asylum-seekers from Darfur.

One should spare a thought for the immigration officials. We pay them to keep the door shut but to open it discriminately, case by case. One of their rulings is that it’s OK to return Darfur refugees to Khartoum. Back in April this ruling was overturned in favour of the three Darfuris.

That was in the Court of Appeal, which decided that deporting them would be unduly harsh because of the conditions in the Sudanese refugee camps.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaInternacionalONU,

We speak often and easily about Darfur. But what can we say with surety? By conventional shorthand, it is a society at war with itself. Rebels battle the government; the government battles the rebels. Yet the reality is more complicated. Lately, the fighting often as not pits tribe against tribe, warlord against warlord.

Nor is the crisis confined to Darfur. It has spilled over borders, destabilizing the region. Darfur is also an environmental crisis -- a conflict that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.

I have just returned from a week in Darfur and the surrounding region.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaInternacionalONU,

Jonathan Steele reports that, on his recent trip to Sudan, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon "was conspicuously unwilling to criticise Sudan's President Bashir for human rights violations" (The UN leader is right to defy the Khartoum bashers, September 11). Most of us would read such a statement as a strong indictment of someone who is supposed to speak for the world's conscience. But Steele meant it as praise.His column is peppered with denials and red herrings: it's not the government that's responsible, it's climate change; it's not the government killing civilians, bombing villages and arming militia, it's just "violence between rival clans".…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfricaInternacionalONU,

It was a good week for the UN secretary general, and perhaps for Darfur. Ban Ki-moon has made solving the crisis in Sudan's western region a top priority, and on Thursday he achieved a significant breakthrough. On a six-day swing through Sudan, Chad and Libya, he announced that Darfur's rebels would sit down to peace talks with the Sudanese government in Libya next month.For journalists travelling with him, as I did, the former Korean foreign minister's delight was tangible, even though his carefully controlled face does not relax easily. He wanted to give people in Darfur "a message of hope", he said, and he clearly felt he had done that.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

There has been important progress on Darfur in the past two months. In July we agreed on the deployment of a robust UN/African Union (AU) force and the start of peace talks. But the situation remains completely unacceptable. In the coming weeks and months, we commit as leaders to redouble our efforts to make further progress.

At the end of July the UN agreed to our plan. UN Resolution 1769, passed –– for the first time –– unanimously, was the culmination of intense diplomatic activity over the crisis in Darfur. In the next few weeks, one of the largest UN troop deployments –– this time in partnership with the African Union –– will begin arriving in Darfur.…  Seguir leyendo »