Sudan pressured to rein in militia
UNITED NATIONS – Sudan’s government has “a very short time” to curb attacks by Arab militias against black Africans and to allow relief workers access to more than 1 million people displaced by the violence or it will face U.N. intervention, said the top U.S. aid official Friday.
The United States has circulated a draft Security Council resolution that would impose immediate sanctions on the government-supported militia, known as the janjaweed, and would leave open the possibility of tough measures against Sudan’s leaders if they don’t take significant steps to halt the violence after 30 days.
“It is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” said Andrew Natsios, chief administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development, after briefing the Security Council on the crisis.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan were in Sudan this week to heighten pressure on the government to stop helping the janjaweed militias, who have killed and assaulted thousands of black Africans and driven an estimated 1.2 million from their homes.
Powell and Annan demanded immediate and concrete steps to disarm and contain the militias and to allow access for aid groups whose work had been blocked.
“We will not be waiting for a long time,” Natsios said. “We’re not talking about months here, we’re talking about days or weeks.”
Sudan has been riven by a civil war between the Muslim north and largely black and Christian south for the past 21 years.
In the briefing Friday, Natsios displayed satellite photos that showed the destruction of hundreds of black African villages while nearby Arab communities were untouched. It revealed a government-sponsored pattern of ethnic cleansing that has forced the displaced into crowded and unsanitary camps that they are afraid to leave, he said. Men who have ventured out were executed on the spot by the janjaweed, and the women raped.
“The cities and the displaced camps have become prisons,” he said. “They are concentration camps.”
The United States is proposing a resolution that would impose a travel ban and arms embargo on the janjaweed, require the government to disarm and contain the militia and to allow the Organization of African Unity and U.N. monitors into the region. It does not impose any sanctions on the leaders in Khartoum, the capital, but contains an implicit threat of action against them after 30 days.
Council members are largely supportive of the resolution, but say they will give Khartoum a short grace period to act on its pledges.
“The thing now is to tell the Sudanese government in one voice that they must stick to their own commitments,” said Gunter Pleuger, the German ambassador to the United Nations. “Time is of the essence, because people are dying there.”
U.N. agencies and aid groups have warned of a large death toll by the end of the year unless more humanitarian aid gets through to civilians. Natsios has said another 1 million will die if nothing is done, while if action is taken now, the toll could be limited to 300,000.