The good and bad news about peace and relief efforts in Sudan, Chad, and Uganda
Former General Assembly president and Swedish foreign minister Jan Eliasson has been chosen as a UN envoy to deal with the crisis in Darfur. He will be starting work at the beginning of the year. Another special envoy, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, is holding talks in Khartoum with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir about ending the fighting in Darfur and providing extra UN support to the African Union peacekeeping force.
The hybrid force is expected to have about 17,000 troops and 3,000 police officers, compared to the current AMIS strength of around 7,000.
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Under the first phase of enhanced UN support, the UN is giving AMIS a $21 million “light support package,” which includes the provision of some equipment as well as 105 military advisers, 33 police officers and 48 civilian staff from the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) – a separate peacekeeping operation mandated to oversee a peace pact that ended the 21-year war in the country’s south.
The UN Security Council has given unanimous backing for a hybrid UN-African Union force for Darfur.
The relief situation continues to deteriorate in Darfur, as the UN has evacuated 70 aid workers from the largest refugee camp in Darfur, “leaving some 130,000 refugees virtually without humanitarian help.” The Bill Gates Foundation has approved a $1 million grant to assist displaced families in West Darfur with sanitation and clean drinking water (assuming, I guess, that all the water sanitation people don’t get evacuated away from the displaced families).
The UN Refugee Agenncy is airlifting refugees from the DRC and the Central African Republic to their respective homes in Angola and South Sudan.
Having previously presented the case against separation, Black Kush now presents the case for South Sudan separating from Sudan.
The UN reported on 17 December 2006 that the security situation remained tense in Malakal and Juba in South Sudan.
The UN refugee chief is visiting Chad this week to strengthen efforts to maintain a vital relief line that has been threatened by violence there. Here are recent maps of IDPs in Chad and humanitarian actors’ presence in eastern Chad.
Chad rebel groups have dismissed as a “non-event” reconciliation efforts between President Deby and one insurgent leader.
Nguebla and other rebel spokesmen said Nour had become isolated since April from other Chadian insurgent groups, whose ranks had been swelled by fighters abandoning his United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), which was split by factional feuds.
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Following his isolation from the other rebel groups, Nour signalled his change of heart at the end of November by calling for a national political dialogue in Chad.
The rebel alliance still under arms includes the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD), and the Platform for Change, National Unity and Democracy (SCUD).
A couple more stories about the spread of the war into Chad, two long for me to summarize before work.
Eleven Central African leaders have signed an agreement to end civil wars.
The leaders who signed the pact included Presidents Mwai Kibaki (Kenya), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania), Levy Mwanawasa (Zambia), Joseph Kabila (DRC), Pierre Nkurunziza (Burundi) and Bernard Mukuza, Rwanda’s Prime Minister. Others were government representatives from Angola, Sudan, Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
Some of the countries whose leaders signed the agreement in Nairobi, have fought against each other in recent times.
The Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have signed a two month extension of their truce. Tensions obviously remain; the president of Uganda has referred to the LRA as the “Satan Resistance Army,” and the International Criminal Court has indicted some leaders of the LRA
The government of South Sudan continues to mediate peace talks between the government of Uganda and the LRA.
The chief mediator, Dr. Riek Machar, said they hope to remove a weapon that their enemies could use to destabilise the south.
“We hope they sign the peace agreement because if we don’t solve it, the LRA would be a problem for us,” Machar said. “Our good partners – I think you know them – would use the LRA to fight us.”
President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo has promised to disarm Ugandan rebels operating from Congolese territory.