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Posted 10:33 AM
by Mary
Indictment of Sudanese Leader Seen as Threat to Peacekeepers
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2008; A01
UNITED NATIONS -- Six days before Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was charged with genocide, a group of 200 fighters on horseback, supported by more than 40 vehicles mounted with machine guns, carried out the bloodiest and most sophisticated ambush yet on a fledgling U.N. and African peacekeeping mission.
The July 8 attack -- which killed seven peacekeepers and wounded 22 -- bore similarities to Sudanese-backed raids by Janjaweed horsemen that have led to the deaths of more than 300,000 civilians and forced nearly 3 million people from their homes in Darfur over the past five years, according to internal U.N. accounts.
Some U.N. officials suspect the operation was intended to serve as a warning to U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers of Sudan's intent to use deadly force if the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court targeted the country's leader. On Wednesday, those fears were heightened after a Nigerian company commander was killed by unidentified assailants in the town of Forobaranga in West Darfur.
"We are very worried there could be a gradual increase in violence, which could make the mission quite vulnerable," Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping, said in an interview. But it "will be very hard to pin down responsibility" for the attacks, he predicted.
The Sudanese government has strenuously denied involvement in the attack, accusing a rebel faction, the SLA-Unity, of responsibility. U.N. peacekeeping officials said that Sudanese authorities actually improved cooperation in the days following the announcement of the charges against Bashir. The U.N. case, said Sudan's U.N. envoy, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, "doesn't hold water."
Labels: darfur, ICC
Posted 1:07 PM
by Mary
The U.N.'s World Food Program is struggling as costs of food and fuel skyrocket while the numbers of people needing help surge across the globe. Millions are in danger.
By Edmund Sanders and Tracy Wilkinson,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
KHARTOUM, SUDAN -- For 15 years, he's been a "grocer" for Africa's destitute. But he's never seen anything like this.
Pascal Joannes' job is to find grains, beans and oils to fill a food basket for Sudan's neediest people, from Darfur refugees to schoolchildren in the barren south.
Lately Joannes has spent less time shopping and more time poring over commodity price lists, usually in disbelief.
"White beans at $1,160," the white-haired Belgian, 52, cries in despair over the price of a metric ton. "Complete madness! I bought them two years ago in Ethiopia for $235."
Joannes is head of procurement in Sudan for the World Food Program, the United Nations agency in charge of alleviating world hunger.
Meteoric food and fuel prices, a slumping dollar, the demand for biofuels and a string of poor harvests have combined to abruptly multiply WFP's operating costs, even as needs increase. In other words, if the number of needy people stayed constant, it would take much more money to feed them. But the number of people needing help is surging dramatically. It is what WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran calls "a perfect storm" hitting the world's hungry.
The agency last month issued an emergency appeal for money to cover a shortfall tallied at more than half a billion dollars and growing. It said it might have to reduce food rations or cut people off altogether.
The most vulnerable are people like those in Sudan, whom Joannes is struggling to feed and who rely heavily, perhaps exclusively, on the aid. But at least as alarming, WFP officials say, is the emerging community of newly needy.
These are the people who once ate three meals a day and could afford nominal healthcare or to send their children to school. They are more likely to live in urban areas and buy most of their food in a market.
Labels: darfur, food
