Thousands of people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when an Arab militia, known as the , began attacking the villages of black ethnic groups. Rebel groups retaliated and have since been launching attacks of their own against Sudanese government troops, who are seen as acting in concert with the . The chaos is spreading. It has periodically spilled over into Chad and the Central African Republic, where thousands of displaced Darfuris have fled to refugee camps. The has also attacked villages and encampments in Chad itself, recently killing up to 400 people, Chadian and Sudanese troops have clashed, and African Union peacekeepers have been killed.
Darfuris, human rights groups and a powerful coalition of international activists accuse the Sudanese state of carrying out a systematic genocide against the black peoples of Darfur. The government denies that genocide is happening and says only 9,000 people have lost their lives in a conflict it blames on rebel groups who have refused to sign a peace agreement.
But, while all the talk is underway, survivors continue to tell their stories of government aircraft strafing their villages, and of horsemen - supported by Sudanese soldiers ? driving them from their homes, raping women and murdering men and children, before razing Darfuri settlements.
In an interview with VOA, Sudan?s deputy ambassador to the US, Salah Elguneid, insisted that his government was doing its ?best? to achieve peace in Darfur. He said the region was calm and only seven areas were ?tense? because of ?tribal disagreements.?
?Nobody is denying that we have problems in Darfur. There are civil or communal and tribal crises in Darfur. And we are doing our utmost efforts to solve the problem and solve it for definite,? Elguneid said.
He denied that government soldiers had ever cooperated with the .
?The are bandits and my government does not cooperate with bandits,? Elguneid emphasized.
Although the AU has about 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, the force has proved largely ineffectual; it?s stretched across a region the size of France and is also severely under-resourced and under-funded. Al-Bashir has resisted a full-scale UN peacekeeping force into Darfur to stop the violence but has agreed to a hybrid AU-UN force that he insists be staffed mostly by Africans and UN ?logistical? personnel.
The terms of the deployment of the peacekeeping force continue to be the subject of heated international debate.
Khalid Musa, political attaché at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C., insisted that his government opposes the deployment of the UN in Darfur on the basis of a ?good and practical? reason: ?That would not help to resolve the conflict. We have good examples. In Iraq right now; we have hundreds of thousands of troops. But it could not bring peace. We have a good example in Somalia right now (where the deployment of Ethiopian and AU troops has not resulted in peace).?
Susan Rice, former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, has repeatedly urged an end to negotiations about the composition of the peacekeeping force for Darfur, and for the international community to agree to impose a force ?on its own terms? upon Sudan.
She said the world should no longer allow the Sudanese government to dictate the terms of a solution. Diplomacy, she stressed, had failed, and almost four years of negotiations had run their course.
While all the talk continues, Rice said, the world was allowing ?more and more to die and the region to become further inflamed.?
The time had arrived for the international community, and specifically the US, to give the Sudanese government a ?very short duration ultimatum in which to accept an effective and robust international force with a mandate to protect civilians - or face the threat of the use of military force,? she said.
According to Rice, this force should take the form of ?air strikes, targeted at the aircraft, the airfields (of the Sudanese government). That?s exactly what we (the international community through the UN) did in Kosovo, in a far lesser humanitarian crisis. It?s striking to me that we aren?t even discussing or contemplating that in the context of Darfur.?
Reacting to Rice?s comments, Salah told VOA: ?We think such statements of violence will not lead to peace. Only a political solution to the crisis can be viable and sustainable and lasting.?