1) Omar al-Bashir, Sudan. Age 62. In power since 1989. Last year’s rank: 1

Since February 2003, Bashir’s campaign of ethnic and religious persecution has killed at least 180,000 civilians in Darfur in western Sudan and driven 2 million people from their homes. The good news is that Bashir’s army and the Janjaweed militia that he supports have all but stopped burning down villages in Darfur. The bad news is why they’ve stopped: There are few villages left to burn. The attacks now are aimed at refugee camps. While the media have called these actions “a humanitarian tragedy,” Bashir himself has escaped major condemnation. In 2005, Bashir signed a peace agreement with the largest rebel group in non-Islamic southern Sudan and allowed its leader, John Garang, to become the nation’s vice president. But Garang died in July in a helicopter crash, and Bashir’s troops still occupy the south.

Read more about Omar al-Bashir

Even the most loathsome tyrants are occasionally admired for their charm, their guile or perhaps their intellect. The same cannot be said for Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir who heads one of Africa’s biggest and potentially richest nations. Part blowhard, part thug, al-Bashir is a graduate of the ‘Idi Amin School of Dictators’.

When General al-Bashir seized power in a sudden military coup on 30 June 1989 there were nagging doubts about his ability to take charge of the mammoth war-torn nation. A youthful 42 at the time, he had been one of the key figures in the Sudanese military assault on black southerners.

Sudan is a country divided between mostly Muslim Arabs in the north and Christian or animist black Africans in the south. The southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) launched its drive for secular democracy and self-determination in 1983. Since then, the Government (even before al-Bashir became leader) has conducted an all-out war against southern dissidents. Amnesty International estimates ~ million people have died in the carnage while 4.5 million have become internal exiles and another 4.5 million have fled the country.

AI-Bashir was an eager, early player in this mayhem. He was born into a peasant family in the small village of Hosh Bannaga, 150 kilometres north of the capital Khartoum. As a young man he later joined the army and quickly vaulted to the top of the command structure. He studied at military college in Cairo where he also became a crack paratrooper, later serving with the Egyptian army in the 1973 war against Israel. Back in Sudan, al-Bashir led a series of successful assaults on the SPLA in the early 19805 and soon was appointed General - scant 20 years after leaving military college.

Al-Bashir toppled Sadeq al-Mahdi’s democratically elected government in 1989 -’to save the country from rotten political parties’ as he said later. With the backing of Hassan al-Turabi, the fundamentalist leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF), the General immediately took steps to ‘islamicize’ the state. Al-Bashir dissolved parliament, banned all political parties and shut down the press. He also stepped up scorched-earth campaign in the south while courting his fundamentalist supporters. All opponents were dismissed as ‘agents imperialism and Zionism’.

Like his fellow Middle-Eastern demogogues, al Bashir loves nothing better than a good anti-Semitic rant. He . once claimed that ‘Jews control all decision-making centres in the US. The Secretary of State, the Defence Secretary, the National Security Advisor and the CIA are all [controlled by] Jews’. In March 1991 al-Bashir reinstated strict Islamic . religious law (sharia), pleasing al-Turabi who was appointed speaker of the country’s jerry-rigged parliament.

But not for long. Jealous of the influential cleric’s growing power in the NIF, al-Bashir declared a state of emergency in December 1999 and ousted al-Turabi from the party.

He followed this with showcase elections a year later which he won easily. Not that difficult a feat given that all major opposition parties were in hiding and SPLA-controlled areas in the south didn’t take part at all.

Meanwhile, both international outrage and the death toll in the civil war continues to mount. The General’s regime has been buoyed by infusions of cash from the petroleum industry which has refused to bow to international pressure and continues to pump oil along a 2,200 kilometre pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Al-Bashir shrugs off UN sanctions and the loss of World Bank aid, secure in his new-found oil wealth. Sudan, he crows, has entered ‘a new stage. We have learned to rely on ourselves.’

Not quite. There would be no oil money to grease the war machine without the co-operation of a consortium of foreign oil companies led, shamefully, by Canada’s Talisman Energy. Arms imports have skyrocketed with the new oil money - as has Government bombing of southern civilians. President al Bashir has openly declared his intention of using petrodollars to win the war. One press report noted that ‘troops backed by tanks, helicopter gunships and aerial bombardments are torturing, slaughtering and burning men, women and children in a drive to evict all non-Arabs from oil-producing areas.’ To add to Sudan’s misery, food shortages, rooted in war and exacerbated by drought, are widespread and a deadly, biblical-style famine now threatens millions.

But never mind. Omar al-Bashir seems unperturbed. While he was bombing his fellow Sudanese citizens in the south he decided to honour his own success. On the tenth anniversary of the coup that brought him to power he decorated himself with a national medal.

By Craig Timberg

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Khartoum, Sudan - If you’re sipping a cappuccino at a coffeehouse in the glistening new Afra Mall here in Sudan’s bustling capital, the helicopter gunships and Janjaweed attacks and sprawling, squalid camps for Darfur’s millions of displaced people seem much farther than a two-hour airplane flight away. Late-model Toyotas and Hyundais buzz outside on the (mostly) paved streets. The construction business is so blazingly hot that shops are moving into the first floors of buildings as work continues on the as-yet-unbuilt upper stories.

The Afra Mall features a bowling alley, a movie theater, a gym, jewelry stores and a boutique specializing in Italian shirts. You can buy Ping-Pong paddles, MP3 players and an electric shaver that oozes skin lotion. Khartoum feels on the move — not exactly how one would imagine the home of a government embarked on a bombing campaign against civilians unlucky enough to live in a neglected, restive region.

The reasons for this capital’s surging prosperity are simple: oil and peace. The oil began to flow in the late 1990s, and by now the wealth is spilling out across Khartoum. And the peace — not in Darfur yet, but in the longer and more consuming civil war in the south — came last year in a deal that freed up Sudan’s national energy for better things. Investment from China, Turkey and the Arab world is flowing in. Sudanese expats are returning, often with new skills and sensibilities. Gross domestic product has shot up, more than doubling from 2000 to 2005.

What might Khartoum be like if an honorable peace ever came to Darfur?

Khartoum’s leaders already dream of turning their city of several million people into the next Dubai. But the reek of Darfur — a place synonymous with allegations of genocide and war crimes — infuses Sudan’s international image. How can any government consider warming relations with Khartoum when demonstrators are marching on capitals worldwide to protest what’s happening there?

The international tension over Darfur also contributes to Sudan’s police-state mentality, the other critical barrier to Khartoum’s emergence as a business crossroads. Governments under pressure — and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has repeatedly vowed to wage war against a U.N. peacekeeping force if it attempts to deploy to Darfur — make for paranoid governments. Who would want to spend a holiday at Khartoum’s Hilton knowing that their phone calls and e-mails are monitored by the secret police? By the time I left Sudan recently after three weeks of reporting, I had absorbed enough of the national anxiety over surveillance to largely stop using my phones and the Internet. And no question, it really darkens the mood of a place.

One man working (rather profitably) toward a more inviting Khartoum is Osama Daoud Latif, a second-generation Sudanese businessman with bushy eyebrows, a mild voice and impeccable English honed during years of living in Britain. He doesn’t wear the long white robes and knit cap common to Sudanese men, but instead sports an orange-and-white plaid shirt that could have been made by Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger.

Latif is the owner of the Ozone cafe, a trendy new shop here, which he built last year on a weed-choked traffic circle near his home. His company also owns a giant flour mill, a dairy, a car importer and Sudan’s Coca-Cola distributorship, which explains why standing outside of Ozone, tall as a tree, is a replica of a familiar brown-and-red bottle.

At the new international baccalaureate school built by Latif’s company, the children don’t chant Koranic verses. Instead, they sing that homage to Western capitalism, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” (Even the Pepsi distributor sends his son there, Latif says, with a smile verging on smugness.)

His dreams are still more grand. Along with the Khartoum state government, Latif’s company is attempting to build what amounts to a new city — complete with its own water system, electric generation and zoning rules — on 160 acres where the Blue and White Nile Rivers merge to begin their journey north to Egypt. Called Almogran (Arabic for “where the rivers meet”), the $4 billion project is designed to include luxury hotels, corporate headquarters, office towers, entertainment, parks and a massive residential section with houses overlooking the wide and beautiful White Nile.

“You cannot create Dubai,” Latif says. “You can create a new Khartoum.”

The commercial sections of the project are selling, Latif says, but the main barriers to realizing his vision — not just for Almogran but also for Khartoum — are the war in Darfur and Sudan’s tight government restrictions on speech, politics and personal behavior.

Latif maintains that Sudan’s Big Brotherish tendencies have eased somewhat, but in Khartoum I found mostly fear, both of the secret police and of extremist Muslim groups. During my time in Sudan, an allegedly blasphemous newspaper editor was beheaded, several other newspapers were closed and a Canadian television crew was roughed up, many here believed, by the secret police.

The situation in Darfur seems, if anything, more intractable. Both the government and the rebels have moved into a more intense phase of fighting. A peace deal worked out in May is dead. As Khartoum springs to life, Darfur descends even deeper into hell.

In Khartoum, it’s safe to walk outside at midnight; in Darfur, girls who leave camps in search of firewood in the middle of the day are raped. In Khartoum, the wide streets boast new traffic lights and concrete overpasses; in Darfur, there is one major road through an area the size of Texas. In Khartoum, the city is abuzz with money and deals; in Darfur, people are so poor that only international aid groups are keeping millions from starvation. In Khartoum, there is hope; in Darfur, despair.

Sudanese in Khartoum often say that the death and destruction in Darfur is not so unusual. Angola, Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe (to name just a few) have endured massive human tragedies fueled by conflict over the past couple of decades. Measured against them, perhaps Darfur is not so shocking. But measured against Khartoum, it surely is. What Latif has realized, and the leaders of Sudan’s government apparently have not, is that however different Khartoum and Darfur may be, their fates are intertwined.

“There is no future,” Latif says, “without settlement in Darfur.”

By Audra Ang, Associated Press Writer

Friday, November 3, 2006

Beijing - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Friday that his government will not relent on its rejection of U.N. peacekeeping troops for Darfur.

Al-Bashir, in Beijing for a landmark summit between Chinese and African leaders, said allowing U.N. troops into Darfur would lead to a greater number of deaths, likening it to the peacekeeping situation in

Iraq.

“We refuse to accept the entry of U.N. peacekeepers into Sudan because the impact of our refusal is better than the impact of our acceptance,” al-Bashir said, speaking in Arabic at a news conference. “We dare not think of what the consequences would be of them being there.”

Hu Jintao, who urged Sudan to step up its diplomacy on Darfur.

Members of Darfur’s ethnic African tribes took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect and discrimination.

Al-Bashir’s government has been accused of unleashing brutal militiamen known as janjaweed, who are widely alleged to have destroyed hundreds of villages, killing the inhabitants, raping women and stealing livestock.

At least 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced.

The U.N. has authorized 20,000 troops to replace an under-equipped force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, but al-Bashir’s government has rejected the U.N. force, saying they would be “neocolonialists.” Last month, it expelled the U.N.’s Sudan envoy.

“We were using traditional methods and measures to resolve the conflict,” al-Bashir said. “The cause of the crisis is the interference from external powers … mainly the United States.”

President Bush has called the atrocities in Sudan “genocide” and warned the government last week that it must move soon to resolve the Darfur conflict.

“Sudan must understand that we’re … earnest and serious about their necessity to step up and work with the international community,” the president said after meeting with Andrew Natsios, the United States’ special envoy to Sudan.

Violence has been escalating recently in the region. The U.N. said large-scale militia attacks last week on civilian settlements caused scores of deaths — including children younger than 12 — and forced thousands to flee.

In the run-up to the China-Africa summit, activists are hoping that Beijing will use its growing economic clout with Africa to improve human rights. New York-based Human Rights Watch said China was supporting African governments responsible for some of the continent’s worst human rights violations and particularly cited Sudan and Zimbabwe.

“China insists that it will not ‘interfere’ in other countries’ domestic affairs, but it also claims to be a great friend of the African people and a responsible major power,” Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “But that doesn’t square with staying silent while mass killings go on in Darfur.”

November 18, 2006

Khartoum, Sudan (AP) — The Sudanese army and government-backed militias are committing acts of “inexplicable terror” against civilians, including children, in Darfur, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official said.

The accusations by Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, came as Sudanese officials indicated they might backtrack from a deal for a mixed U.N. and African peacekeeping force.

Egeland said spiraling violence in the conflict-wracked region of western Sudan is reaching its worst level since fighting erupted more than three years ago.

“The government and its militias are conducting inexplicable terror against civilians,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday just after returning from his final trip to the area before his term ends in December.

“The government is arming Arab militias more than ever before … the angst is that we may be reverting to the same level of violence” as in 2003 when the war in Darfur erupted, he said.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government in the vast arid area of western Sudan. Khartoum is accused of using the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads to retaliate but the government denies backing or arming the janjaweed.

While in Darfur, Egeland visited a government hospital in Geneina where survivors were being treated after an attack last week by government forces and janjaweed that killed 30 people.

“I saw a 2-year-old girl who was shot in the neck at point blank by a janjaweed,” Egeland said. “This is an act of terror.”

The baby’s mother and several eyewitnesses confirmed the attack was jointly conducted by the army and militias, he said.

“Those who continue to attack defenseless civilians will be judged,” Egeland told reporters at a separate news conference. “There will be a time of reckoning.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced on Thursday night a multilateral agreement — reached in a gathering of African, Arab, European and U.N. leaders in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa — which could provide for a mixed U.N. and African Union peacekeeping mission for Darfur.

But Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol played down the scope of the agreement. Khartoum has not committed to a “mixed force,” he said. “What was agreed upon is a mixed operation,” he said.

“The role of the United Nations will be to provide support units and technical assistance to the African mission,” Akol told reporters. “There is no way the main fighting force would be a mixed one.”

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has firmly opposed any deployment of U.N. troops in Darfur to replace the 7,000 ill-equipped and poorly funded AU peacekeepers who have been unable to stop the bloodshed.

But other officials have said a combined force would not pose a problem, providing that its leadership and the bulk of its troops were African — a sign that Sudan’s political leadership may be sending mixed messages in order to avoid the appearance of a policy shift in the face of Western pressure.

Still Egeland said he was confident all parties involved would soon reach a final agreement for a beefed-up force.

“I have no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of the Sudanese negotiators in Addis,” he told reporters, adding that he hoped time would not be wasted “wrangling on words.”

Another senior U.N. official in Sudan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said he feared the new deal could just be a smokescreen for Khartoum to buy time as its militias rampage through Darfur.

U.N. officials and humanitarian workers have said that violence in Darfur has only increased since the government and the main Darfur rebel group signed a peace agreement in May.

“Civilians are being killed as we speak,” Egeland said, warning that the crisis “still has the potential of becoming infinitely worse.”

He said a similar raid in Jebel Moon last month showed that the children were not accidental casualties.

“It is not so-called collateral damage,” Egeland said. “It is the intentional killing of children.”

Separately, the AU said in a statement Saturday it received reports the Sudanese air force twice bombed the Birmaza rebel zone in North Darfur this week. The attacks, conducted jointly with armed militia groups, took a “heavy toll on the civilian population,” the AU said.

The Sudanese government says uniformed fighters belong to regular forces and don’t commit war crimes, while those clad in traditional garb are bandits it does not control. A government investigation said the Jebel Moon killing was committed by “renegade Arab bandits.”

Egeland said aid workers’ ability to carry out their humanitarian mission was “crumbling” because of the violence and underscored the urgent need to beef up the peacekeeping force.

A former member of Sudan’s pro-government Arab militias, the Janjaweed, has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that ministers in Khartoum gave orders for the activities of his unit in the Darfur region, which included killings and rape.

Following are excerpts of the interview with ex-fighter “Ali”, who is now living in London.

‘Government orders’

The people who trained us came from the north, from the government. They gave us orders, and they say that after we are trained they will give us guns and ammunition…

They were wearing the uniforms of the military…

I tell you one fact. The Janjaweed don’t make decisions. The orders come from the government…

One very well-known and regular visitor was Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein.

‘Kill!’

We will be split into two groups, one on horses, one on camels…

The aircraft went ahead of the Janjaweed. We saw the smoke, we saw the fire, then we went in…

Whenever we go into a village and find resistance we kill everyone. Sometimes they said wipe out an entire village…

We hear kill! Kill! Kill! And we shoot to kill…

Victims

Most were civilians - most were women…

Innocent people running out and being killed including children. And those who escape will die of thirst.

There are many rapes. But they don’t do it in front of others. They take the victim away and rape them.

Sudan ‘backs’ Janjaweed fighters

The Janjaweed militia in Darfur are fighting with direct support and orders from Sudan’s government, a man claiming to be a former member has told the BBC.

“Ali” said he had taken part in attacks on Darfur villages after they had been bombed by the Sudanese air force.

He said he had seen ministers at training camps for the pro-government Arab militia.

Khartoum has always denied any links to the Janjaweed, who have been accused of war crimes against civilians in Darfur.

More than two million people have fled their homes during the three-year conflict.

‘Military uniforms’

A man identified only as “Ali” told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that Sudanese ministers gave express orders for the activities of his unit, which included rape and killing children.

“The Janjaweed don’t make decisions. The orders always come from the government,” he said.

“They gave us orders, and they say that after we are trained they will give us guns and ammunition.”

“Ali” - who is now seeking asylum in Britain - said the men who had trained them were wearing the uniforms of the Sudanese military, adding that Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein was a “regular visitor”.

The former fighter said the majority of the victims were civilians, mostly women, and also talked of “many rapes” committed by the Janjaweed.

“Whenever we go into a village and find resistance we kill everyone,” he said, but denied that he personally killed or raped civilians.

Hilary Benn, a British government minister who visited Darfur on Monday, said the man’s evidence was “clearly very serious”.

Mr Benn urged him to speak to investigators from the International Criminal Court.

Khartoum denials

The conflict began in the arid and impoverished region after a rebel group began attacking government targets, saying the region was being neglected by Khartoum.

The rebels say the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs.

Khartoum has always denied backing the Arab militias, saying the problems in its rebel Darfur region are being exaggerated for political reasons. President Omar al-Bashir has called them “thieves and gangsters”.

After strong international pressure and the threat of sanctions, the government promised to disarm the Janjaweed.

But so far there is little evidence this has happened.

April 27, 2005

China relies on Sudan for 7 percent of all its oil imports and has gone to great efforts to protect President Omar al-Bashir.

A metallic maze of chimneys, pipes and vents glitters on the horizon in the desert outside Khartoum, dominating the landscape for kilometers.

This new oil refinery is the jewel in the crown of Sudan’s military regime. It forms the vital artery of a thriving oil industry that pumped 1 billion pounds (HK$14.92 billion) into government coffers last year.

Without this windfall gain - likely to be far larger this year - President Omar al-Bashir could not maintain his military machine, let alone wage war against rebels in the western region of Darfur. Nor could he hope to withstand the international pressure his bloody campaign in Darfur has brought upon him.

Moreover, the oil that started to flow as recently as 1999 has given Bashir an indispensable international ally.

Almost unnoticed by the outside world, China has become the key player in Sudan’s oil industry.

Beijing has invested 8 billion in Sudanese oil through the China National Petroleum Company, a state-owned monolith.

The cost of Khartoum’s new refinery alone was about 350 million.

Freshly painted billboards in Khartoum carry pictures of smiling Chinese oil workers and the slogan: “CNPC - Your close friend and faithful partner.”

But this faithful friend is secretive about its stake in Africa’s largest country. China’s embassy in Khartoum and its commercial office declined to talk about oil.

“We are a shareholder in a number of operating companies here,'’ said a CNPC spokesman. “We conduct our operations through them. If you want to learn more, you must contact the mines and energy ministry.”

Yet CNPC’s annual report discloses that about half of all its overseas oil comes from Sudan. It deployed 10,000 mainland workers to build a 1,449- kilometer pipeline, linking Heglig oilfield in Kordofan province with Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The company’s report trumpets this achievement as its “first long-distance crude pipeline constructed and operated abroad.”

In fact, Beijing shamelessly curried favor with Bashir by speeding up this mammoth project so it could be finished in June 1999 - the tenth anniversary of the coup that brought him to power.

China is now dependent on Sudan for 7 percent of all its oil imports. Hence Beijing has gone to great efforts to shield Bashir. Last September, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1564, threatening Sudan with oil sanctions unless it curbed the violence in Darfur. But Beijing immediately rendered this meaningless by pledging to veto any bid to impose an embargo.

Critics accuse Beijing of being Sudan’s chief international protector.

“It’s very clear that’s what is happening,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa desk at Human Rights Watch. “China is now the largest foreign investor in Sudan so it has an economic interest in ensuring that the Sudanese government is not penalised too harshly. It has been opposed to sanctions from day one.”

Beijing needs Sudan because its appetite for oil is insatiable.

China’s economic boom means oil consumption is forecast to grow by at least 10 percent every year for the foreseeable future. If so, its domestic reserves will be depleted in the next two decades.

So the quest for overseas oil is one of Beijing’s central goals. Last week, Beijing signed a “strategic partnership'’ with Nigeria, a major oil exporter, and has oil interests in at least three other African countries.

In its scramble for Africa, Beijing portrays itself as a more benign partner than the colonial powers and the modern-day multinational companies.

President Hu Jintao told an Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta Sunday: “In pursuit of world peace and common development, China will always stand by, and work through thick and thin, with developing countries.” America has already snapped-up the world’s largest reserves. Saudi Arabia and Iraq - with 370 billion barrels between them, 45 per cent of the world’s total - are effectively closed to China. Sudan, by contrast, is a no-go area for western oil firms.

US investment was officially banned in 1997 and European multinationals steer clear of the avalanche of protests that would accompany any dealings with al-Bashir’s regime. Yet Beijing has no such scruples.

So far, Sudan has only 563 million barrels of proven reserves, but the energy ministry estimates at least five billion barrels lie beneath its deserts.

Sudan’s few independent voices say this has brought disastrous consequences. “The crisis in Sudan is being fueled by the issue of oil,” said William Ezekiel, editor of the Khartoum Monitor.

“The government is ready to ally with Satan if it can protect its own interests.”

United States Provides More Emergency Food for Sudan

Bush urges international community to help strengthen peacekeeping operations.

By Charles W. Corey

Washington File Staff Writer

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that it has provided $91 million in emergency food aid to support World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Sudan and eastern Chad since October 1, the start of fiscal year 2007, and is WFP’s largest food donor.

The donation for Sudan, according to an October 17 USAID press release, came in response to appeals by the WFP, which supplies food aid for as many as 3 million people in the Darfur region and 220,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad who rely on WFP for their basic food needs.

Of the total $91 million contribution, $76 million will be used to assist people in Darfur and the rest of Sudan and $15 million will be used to assist Sudanese refugees and affected communities in eastern Chad. The contribution will provide 93,510 metric tons of cereal and noncereal commodities to the conflict-affected region.

In fiscal year 2006, USAID provided 475,910 metric tons of food valued at $458 million to WFP and International Committee of the Red Cross operations in Sudan and eastern Chad.

The United States provided half of WFP’s 2006 worldwide appeal and two-thirds of all contributions received by WFP worldwide.

WFP has reported that insecurity in Darfur prevented it from distributing food to nearly a quarter million people in September, but that number is down from the 355,000 to whom it could not deliver aid in August. WFP is likely to face new funding shortfalls as early as January 2007, the USAID press release warns.

“The international community must collectively share the burden of assisting Darfur’s most vulnerable. New donations are critically needed,” explained Michael E. Hess, assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance.

Sudan is USAID’s largest program in sub-Saharan Africa, totaling $855 million in fiscal year 2005. The complex program provides extensive humanitarian aid to vulnerable people in southern and eastern Sudan and Darfur, as well as extensive reconstruction assistance in the South, Abyei, Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan.

Peacekeeping efforts in Darfur

In a speech at the opening of the 61st U.N. General Assembly, President Bush named Andrew Natsios, former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as a presidential special envoy to lead U.S. efforts to bring peace to Darfur. (See related article.)

Addressing his remarks directly to the people of the region, Bush said, “You have suffered unspeakable violence, and my nation has called these atrocities what they are — genocide.”

“The world must step forward to provide additional humanitarian aid, and we must strengthen the African Union [AU] force that has done good work but is not strong enough to protect you,” he added.� In particular, Bush asked NATO to strengthen the AU force (AMIS) while it remains in Darfur.

The peacekeeping mission in Darfur currently is led by the AU, which has stated it is unable to continue the effort in its present configuration. In August, the Security Council authorized the expansion of the U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) — which supports the implementation of Sudan’s Peace Agreement of 2005 — by 20,000 troops and police to take over peacekeeping duties in Darfur from the AU for an additional six months, until April 30, 2007. But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir had been refusing to accept the transition.

Facing strong objections by the United States and other nations, however, Sudan withdrew its warning to countries potentially supplying troops to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur that those troops would be considered a hostile threat, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton announced October 6.

Bolton credited the “strong position” taken by members of the Security Council against “the atmosphere of intimidation,” but added that there is still a need to “dispel” that atmosphere.

Darfur peace and accountability act

On October 13, President Bush signed into law the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006 (DPAA) and issued an executive order “blocking property of and prohibiting transactions with the government of Sudan.”

The DPAA imposes sanctions against “persons responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity; supports measures for the protection of civilians and humanitarian operations; and supports peace efforts in the Darfur region of Sudan,” a White House statement says.

The president’s executive order, which takes effect upon the enactment of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, specifically forbids transactions relating to Sudan’s petroleum and petrochemical industries, sectors in which the president noted that “the government of Sudan has a pervasive role” that poses a “threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

The DPAA and the executive order do not limit or restrict humanitarian aid to Darfur. The United States has provided more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance to the people of Sudan, including $400 million during the past 12 months, for emergency food aid to the region.

The United Nations estimates that more than 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003. Close to 2 million others were displaced into refugee camps in the region and in eastern Chad.

By Alfred De Montesquiou

November 20, 2006

Khartoum, Sudan – President Omar al-Bashir’s government on Monday hailed a new agreement with the United Nations over peacekeepers in Darfur as a diplomatic breakthrough for Sudan, but said serious differences remain over the force’s makeup and command.

It was the first official word by Khartoum of its acceptance of the deal, announced Thursday in Addis Ababa. But there were signs the government might still resist hopes for a robust U.N. deployment to bring an end to the continuing bloodshed.

U.N. chief Kofi Annan said the deal calls for a mixed U.N.-African Union force of up to 20,000 troops. If so, that would mean a dramatic reversal of Khartoum’s staunch resistance to deploying any U.N. troops in Darfur

But the Sudanese cabinet statement on Monday spoke only of U.N. “assistance” to the African force and depicted the agreement as a defeat for a Security Council resolution that called for a peacekeeping force fully under U.N. control.

The cabinet, which gathered Sunday, “backed the outcome of the (Sudanese) government meetings … concerning the provision of a package of assistance from the U.N. to the African Union,” the official SUNA news agency said.

SUNA said al-Bashir and his government “showed happiness over what it sees as a diplomatic victory” over advocates of the Security Council resolution on Darfur.

The agency said the president and his ministers still differ with the U.N. on whether the force commander should be from the African Union, or simply from the African continent. The cabinet also has objections to the overall size of the force, SUNA said.

But the government decided these issues are “a technical matter that could be resolved, and not a political one,” the news agency said.

The comments could signal that Sudan will try to reduce the U.N. role in the peacekeeping force. But they could also be part of an effort by the government to save face, after abandoning its earlier position that U.N. troops were unacceptable.

Al-Bashir is scheduled to visit Libya Tuesday for a meeting on Darfur hosted by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Delegations are expected from Sudan, Chad and Egypt.

Gadhafi on Sunday denounced any deployment of U.N. troops in Sudan as “colonialism,” and said the Sudanese army could do a better job than peacekeepers at stopping the violence in Darfur.

“The presence of international forces in Darfur would be a new return to colonialism,” he said. “… Since when were the colonialist powers concerned about us? In the past, they treated us like animals and took us as slaves in their ships.”

The African Union force of 7,000 currently in the Darfur region has not been able to stop the bloodshed. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in years of fighting.

When the deal was announced last week, the U.N. and AU said that all parties, including Sudan, had agreed in principle on a mixed force.

Under the agreement, the joint U.N.-AU statement said, troops for the force would be drawn from African countries to the extent that was possible. But, the statement added, “backstopping and command and control structures will be provided by the UN.”

Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol later insisted Khartoum had never agreed to a “mixed force” but instead to one in which AU soldiers and command would merely receive support from the U.N.

Samani al-Wasila, a Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, repeated Monday in Cairo that the agreement “does not give the right to the international troops to intervene in the region.”

Sudanese hard-liners have fiercely opposed any U.N. presence in Darfur, and at one point al-Bashir said he would personally lead armed resistance to U.N. peacekeepers.

This stance appeared to soften in recent days.

In the official army newspaper Al-Quwat Al-Musalaha, Ibrahim Ahmed Omar, the spokesman for al-Bashir’s National Congress Party, suggested indirectly that the party had accepted that the U.N. will at least partly direct the peacekeeping force in Darfur.

“We will not accept that the U.N. have the full command of the African Union force in Darfur,” he was quoted as saying.

But some U.N. officials worry Khartoum was only buying time to let its army and militia conduct mount more attacks in the region.

Another official, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Sunday that army support for the janjaweed milita has only increased and that the forces are still killing civilians daily. The Sudanese government denied the claim.

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Associated Press Writer Mohamed Osman in Khartoum and Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.

‘Highly inappropriate’ for al-Bashir to head AU

By Jenni Evans | Johannesburg, South Africa

African leaders should not elect Sudan’s president as head of the African Union, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

Omar al-Bashir is a candidate for the rotating presidency, expected to be finalised by the 53 member states at their sixth summit in Khartoum on Monday and Tuesday.

“It would be highly inappropriate for the Sudanese government, which is responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, to preside over the [AU],” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of HRW’s Africa division.

“The AU’s credibility, and its ability to promote and protect human rights, would be irreparably damaged.”

HRW said the Sudanese government, its militias, and members of the rebel movements were already under investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes in violation of international law in Darfur.

The organisation released a 57-page report on “Imperatives for Immediate Change: The African Union in Sudan,” in which it examines the AU’s evolving role in the Darfur conflict in terms of the African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis) as ceasefire monitor and protector of civilians.

It said that as AU leaders and United Nations (UN) planners consider a transfer of the AMIS force to UN control, they would need to ensure that the change did not diminish the mission’s ability to protect civilians.

The report also identifies ways AMIS can be immediately strengthened to improve civilian protection in Darfur as transfer to the UN could take months, and this included the use of deadly force.

HRW said the AU operation in Darfur had been repeatedly obstructed by the Sudanese government and only recently, after months of delay, did the Sudanese government allow Amis to import 105 armoured personnel carriers necessary to protect civilians as well as Amis forces.

“African leaders must put all possible pressure on the Sudanese government to stop impeding the effective operation of Amis,” said Takirambudde. “The Sudanese government’s continued attacks on civilians merit a tougher response from the African Union.”