U.S. and European Media

July 12, 2023

Reuters: U.N. Moves to Authorize Complicated Darfur Force. The U.N. Security Council is expected to authorize up to 26,000 troops and police for Darfur but implementation will take months providing the world body finds enough personnel and Sudan cooperates. On Wednesday, Britain, France and Ghana circulated a draft resolution for a joint African Union-U.N. force, which also threatened force against those who attack civilians, relief workers and obstruct peace efforts. The resolution, expected to be adopted this month, allows the United Nations to formally recruit troops for the mission. The United Nations now has the uphill task of recruiting troops and police, a task not expected to be accomplished until well into next year. Sudan, which has approved the deal after months of reservations, still needs to find enough land and water for the building of new barracks. Infantry troops are expected to be drawn mainly from African nations. The new operation, called the United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur, or UNAMID, will absorb the 7,000 African Union troops currently in Darfur. Engineers and headquarters personnel are expected to be drawn from other nations. The resolution would allow the mission "to use all necessary means," a euphemism for a use of force, "in the areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities." The draft "decides that there will be unity of command and control which, in accordance with basic principles of peacekeeping, means a single chain of command, and further decides that command and control structures and backstopping will be provided by the United Nations." The civilian head of UNAMID is Rodolphe Adada, the Congo Republic's former foreign minister, and the military commander is Gen. Martin Agwai of Nigeria.

Reuters: No more "cat and mouse," Rice tells Sudan. The Sudanese government must not be allowed to keep playing "cat and mouse" with the international community over ending the violence in Darfur, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday. Speaking in Washington at a conference on democracy in Latin America and Africa, Rice said the hybrid peacekeeping force was essential to increasing security and she urged African governments to "hold Sudan accountable." "We must not let the government of Sudan continue this game of cat and mouse diplomacy, making promises then going back on them," Rice said. U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios is in Sudan this week speaking to government officials and trying to convince Khartoum to agree fully to the force.

McClatchy: Confusion rules as Darfur rebel forces split up. As far as Osman Ahmed could tell, the clashes that forced his family out of their home and into a dismal refugee camp last month were no different from the attacks that have devastated Darfur for four years and counting. "The village was totally burned and looted. It was the janjaweed," said Ahmed, a tired-looking man in a long white gown, invoking the name of the government-sponsored Arab militias responsible for most of the carnage in western Sudan. But Ahmed, who fled immediately with his family to safety in Nertiti, about seven miles away, wasn't around to see what happened the following day. Darfur rebels retaliated by striking a nearby government security station, and their allies in the attack were also Arab janjaweed. The account of the clashes around Songa village on June 9 and 10, given by African Union peacekeepers manning a small mountain outpost here in central Darfur, illustrates part of an increasingly upside-down security picture in Darfur. With some janjaweed now fighting alongside rebels they once tried to kill - and with the rebels riven by disputes and attacking peacekeepers and aid workers - this is hardly the same conflict of four years ago. Now there's a new set of problems: Few people know who's attacking or why. Armed groups are breaking off and recombining according to the tactical advantage that day. Aid agencies and peacekeepers are at greater risk than ever.

Agence France Presse: Military officers being sentenced for Darfur crimes: Sudan. Sudan on Wednesday told a key UN human rights panel that it was handling cases against military and police officers accused of crimes in Darfur, and insisted that the International Criminal Court had no jurisdiction over them. In a hearing before the UN Human Rights Committee, Sudanese officials reiterated that their country had not signed up to the International Criminal Court. They insisted that the country's own judicial system was coming to grips with cases of murder, torture and rape in Darfur, while new draft police and army laws, and other measures overseen by the international community were expected to have a deeper impact. "There is no complicity on the part of the state. Some state representatives were implicated and the government has refused to grant any impunity," Sudanese government official Mustafa Matar told the 18-member UN legal panel. "Our courts are doing quite well," he said. The hearing of Sudan by the UN Committee, which oversees the world's primary human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, is due to continue on Thursday. The panel of legal experts is due to issue its findings, based on evidence from the Sudanese government, UN monitors in Sudan and human rights groups, on July 27.

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