KHARTOUM, 17 October 2006 — Sudan announced a plan to disarm Darfur’s feared Janjaweed militia, as a human rights report released yesterday charged that the huge death toll in the region could have been avoided if the world had learned the lessons of Rwanda. Cabinet spokesman Omar Mohammed Saleh told the Khartoum press that the government planned to disarm its proxy militia, which Washington accuses of genocide against non-Arab ethnic groups, within two months.
“A plan to disarm the Janjaweed has been drafted and submitted to the African Union,” Saleh told the English-language daily The Citizen. “This plan will be implemented over the two coming months,” he said after a Cabinet meeting Sunday dedicated to the implementation of a May peace agreement for Darfur.
The deal signed in the Nigerian capital by Khartoum and the main rebel faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement explicitly demands the Janjaweed’s disarmament. The agreement has failed to take hold, however, with the other two rebel factions that took part in the Abuja talks rejecting it and Khartoum refusing to welcome UN peacekeepers to replace an overstretched AU contingent.
The reports did not specify how the government intended to disarm the Janjaweed. At least 200,000 people have died from fighting, famine and disease, and more than two million have fled their homes since fighting erupted in Darfur in February 2003 between ethnic minority rebels and the armed forces and its Janjaweed militia allies. The African Union announced last week it was reviving its idea of reconciliation talks in Darfur, which would discuss issues left unresolved by the peace deal, including that of the Janjaweed’s disarmament.
Saleh said Sunday’s Cabinet meeting had also decided to create a high commission headed by President Omar Bashir tasked with “salvaging the peace agreement ... and facilitating reconciliation between Darfur’s tribes.” The flurry of new initiatives came as the Khartoum government faced mounting pressure from foreign envoys to accept an August Security Council resolution that approved a 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force for the region.
US presidential envoy Andrew Natsios was in Khartoum yesterday and British International Development Secretary Hilary Benn was due later as Western governments came under mounting criticism for not having done more to prevent the crisis. Natsios, arrived for a weeklong visit, but his meetings have been closed to all media as he tries to avert a confrontation with Khartoum over UN troops in Darfur.
London-based watchdog Minority Rights Group accused the international community of failing to learn from the genocide in Rwanda of 1994. “Darfur would just not be in this situation had the UN systems got its act together after Rwanda — their action was too little too late,” said the group’s executive director Mark Lattimer.
