Sudan should be able to disarm militias and other forces quickly, UN expert says

The extrajudicial killings of civilians in western and southern Sudan have been mainly coordinated by the national military and militias backed by the Khartoum Government, which must take quick action to disarm irregular forces and protect its people, a United Nations human rights expert has said.

UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Asma Jahangir's call came in a report released today on her team's two-week investigation of the deaths and displacement in Darfur in the west and the Shilook Kingdom in the south in June.

The expert held an open meeting of representatives of Darfur's Arab and African militias in Khartoum. According to the report, both sides acknowledged that the Government had given them weapons, but had given the Arabs more.

"It appeared that the distribution of arms to these tribes and the amounts distributed was common knowledge," she writes.

The National Armed Forces are the country's main defence, but the Government is empowered to recruit volunteer Popular Defence Forces (PDF) to assist regular forces. A senior PDF officer in El-Fashir "assured me that it would not be difficult to disarm the PDF as the Government kept records of the arms distributed and was formally in command of the PDF," Ms. Jahangir says.

The slow pace of the Government's response to its own citizens' cries for help for many years showed either "complete disrespect for the right to life," especially in Darfur, or, "at worst, complicity in the events," Ms. Jahangir observes.

The conflict between the Government and both African areas - in the south and west - had a common factor. "In both rebellions, economic grievances are a factor and similar tactics are often used by the Government in its response, notably sponsoring militias (apart from the defence forces) to fight the rebels and, more distressingly, to terrorize and kill civilians suspected of supporting the rebels," she concludes.

Citing evidence of "large-scale extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions," she recommends a series of measures, including steps to end the culture of impunity prevailing in Sudan.

After having held talks in Khartoum, the three states of Darfur and Upper Nile State, as well as in Nairobi, Kenya, and Cairo, Egypt, she sent Sudan's Permanent Mission to the UN a copy of her findings. The Government failed to offer a response, according to the report.

Her report was released just before a UN spokesman announced that the Sudanese Government had finalized an agreement reached earlier this week between its Foreign Minister, Osman Ismail, and the senior United Nations envoy to the country, Jan Pronk, to disarm the militias.

Ms. Jahangir says many of the people she interviewed recalled that the cries for help from Darfur had gone out for several years. Clashes between Arab nomads and sedentary African farmers since the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s were noted by a previous UN rapporteur in 1997.

"They reportedly only flared up to attain their present magnitude after the Government of Sudan became involved, carrying out military operations against civilians through its armed forces, including the Popular Defence Forces, and sponsoring militias, including from some ethnically Arab tribes," Ms. Jahangir says.

"A large number of people whom I met had a strong perception that the Government was pursuing a policy of 'Arabization' of the Sudan, and, in particular, the Darfur region. Allegedly, those of Arab descent seek to portray themselves as 'pure' Muslims, as opposed to Muslims of African ethnicity," she adds.

For all of Sudan's conflicts, a comprehensive, just and transparent peace process that takes these grievances into account is needed, she says.