Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
DR SULIMAN
BALDO
29 NOVEMBER 2004
Q1 Tony Worthington: You are very welcome,
Dr Baldo, and we are very much looking forward to your evidence
on behalf of the International Crisis Group. As I am sure you
know, as a Committee we are going to Sudan at the end of January
and your help in preparing us for that visit, alongside all the
other material that we are receiving, will be very welcome indeed.
Could I just say to start with that we have heard a great deal
about the work of the International Crisis Group and read a great
deal in the past. It would be helpful to start with if you could
talk a little bit about what the ICG is and how it comes to be
involved?
Dr Baldo: Many thanks for having
me, your Honour, and ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to be
here and very honoured. I appreciate this opportunity and thank
you for having me. I am here representing the International Crisis
Group. It is a non-profit, private multi-national organisation,
with headquarters in Brussels, whose mission is to help and contribute
to conflict prevention and containment through advocacy, field-based
research and investigations. The organisation has about 100 field-based
analysts in different parts of the world—Africa, the Middle
East, the Balkans, Asia, South East Asia, and advocacy offices
in Brussels, New York, Washington and Moscow, with the aim of
engaging the international powers and international players to
help with conflict prevention and containment. Our work in Africa
is again based on this model of field research and we have field
offices in Dakar, Pretoria and in Nairobi for Central and East
Africa. The work in Sudan was launched in 2002, accompanying mainly—
Q2 Mr Davies: While we are talking about
the Agency itself, can you just tell us what are the sources of
funding of the International Crisis Group?
Dr Baldo: The main funding comes
from private foundations and individuals. ICG also is an agency
that receives government funding and in that capacity it receives
considerable funding, for example, from the Canadian government,
the Norwegians, several Member States of the European Union, the
EU itself, Britain and Ireland. There is a vast variety of donor
players of the organisation.
Q3 Tony Worthington: Thank you very much;
I think that was helpful. Again, before we start, just a point
of clarification which I need—and I do not know if my colleagues
do as well—but there are references to the Sudan Liberation
Army and the Justice and Equality Movement; perhaps you could
put those in context? The Justice and Equality Movement, in my
reading, is associated with Turabi, who leads an Islamic Party;
I understand that much. Could you talk about whether there is
any link at all between the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement
and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Movement with the SPLA,
with which we have been familiar for years? What is that relationship?
Is there one?
Dr Baldo: Starting with the Justice
and Equality Movement, it is associated with al-Turabi's Popular
Congress in Sudan, but not in a way that, again as the government
is arguing, is the armed faction of the Political Popular Congress
of Hassan al-Turabi. So there is a loose association. Senior members
of Turabi's group have joined the game and are pursuing their
policy objectives that are national and that are overlapping with
those of the Popular Congress. So there is that kind of intimate
relationship between the two. With regard to the Sudan Liberation
Army/Movement, it was founded by young Darfurians who were exposed,
in urban centres to which they migrated as young workers and graduates,
to the ideology of the SPLA and their interaction with migrants
who became displaced from southern Sudan in these urban areas,
and as such the SLA is very much influenced by the ideology of
"a new Sudan". That is the ideology that John Garang,
chairman of the SPLA, had formulated when founding the SPLA in
the mid-80s. Later on we have had reliable reports that the SPLA,
the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army, had helped establish
the SLA in its infancy by training fighters for the SPLA and for
the SLA—for the Sudan Liberation Movement and Army, and
therefore Darfurian recruits to the tune of 1,500—and arming
them. When the Southern SPLA started in negotiations with the
government for a peace agreement they distanced themselves from
directly helping the SLA, according to our information, at a military
level. But the SPLA never made a secret of its political sympathy
and support for the cause of the Sudan Liberation Army of Darfur.
There is therefore again this ideological, political sympathy
between the SLA and the SPLA, much as it exists between the Justice
and Equality Movement and the Popular Congress of Hassan al-Turabi.
Q4 Tony Worthington: The SPLA has split
or has had many factions over the years, it has just kept on happening,
and John Garang's ambition was always, as I understand it, for
a united Sudan?
Dr Baldo: Yes.
Q5 Tony Worthington: But he has now been
part of negotiations that are seeing there being a less than unified
Sudan, one which has a lot of control in the south for the south.
What is happening now in terms of the attitudes by the SPLA to
the activities of the SLA? Are they pursuing a common purpose
or has the purpose changed?
Dr Baldo: At a certain level the
SPLA is a national movement. Many in the north of Sudan identify
with the cause of the SPLA. The SPLA has been in a political alliance
and military alliance of the north Sudan opposition groups under
the umbrella of the National Democratic Alliance and SPLA soldiers
are the main contingent of opposition forces that have been fighting
the government in north eastern Sudan since 1995, since the foundation
of the united military command of the National Democratic Alliance.
So the level of identification with the cause of the SPLA is shared
by many different marginalized constituencies in the north of
Sudan, including in Darfur, and the example of the Sudan Liberation
Movement and Army is a good example of that. The SPLA has been
presenting its own negotiations with the government for a permanent,
comprehensive peace agreement, as an avant garde or as
an opening of the way for other marginalized groups to benefit.
The way the negotiations were structured, basically privileging
the actions of the crisis in Sudan that is North-South, has indeed
created a lot of frustration and agitation among other marginalized
groups who believe that the Sudan government and sharing in political
power and wealth is going to be done bi-laterally by the government
and the SPLA, leaving out anyone else. According to these concerns
we have witnessed the eruption of the insurgency in Darfur because
they feel that if they stay outside this process they may not
have sufficient share of the wealth sharing and the political
sharing arrangements for national power. The same level of concern
and agitation is now happening in eastern Sudan, unfortunately.
Q6 Tony Worthington: That was certainly
helpful to me. Could I just, before handing over to my colleagues,
ask you to bring us right up to date with what has been happening
in the last week or so in Darfur, so that we know the present
context?
Dr Baldo: I have made two written
submissions, one in a joint paper on the root causes of the conflict
and the different dimensions and multiple layers of this conflict
situation[1],
and a submission in the name of the International Crisis Group
with a description of recent developments and political descriptions[2].
I did want to focus on the most recent developments, basically
as of late October and in the course of this month. We are very,
very concerned—and I cannot underline it sufficiently—by
certain trends, certain patterns in the violence that is continuing
now in Darfur, because of the prevalence of ethnic revenge as
a motor, as a fuel for much of the violence that is occurring
currently. Several incidents have occurred that highlight this
concern, this development. The background: the government has
politicised ethnicity in Darfur instead of acting as an arbitrator
and as a neutral guarantor between communities that in dispute
over resources or over access to land or grazing ranges. It has
decided to side with particular groups, in this case the groups
of Arab origin. That identity is indeed a politicised identity.
It has been used by local elites in Darfur for political, social
promotion in the government, at the level of the government of
the three states of Darfur and the national government. That has
increased the level of frustration of communities of African background,
and this was a major factor in creating the environment for the
explosion of the insurgency. The government in its counter-insurgency
campaign relied on ethnicity again by raising the Janjaweed militia
from amongst certain clans of some Arab groups, but the Janjaweed
are different things at the same time; they are also people who
are serving terms in government prisons for grave crimes such
as murder, robbery, highway robbery, which is an aspect relating
to a certain situation in the region, and who were freed if they
repented. There was a national campaign which was called Repentance,
and those were integrated in this government militia. The Janjaweed
include also groups of Arab background from Chad, and all that
amalgam was thrown against the civilian base of the rebellion,
and therefore instead of fighting citizens who rose and opposed
the government in armed fashion, the Sudanese Army and its allied
militia attacked civilians to punish collectively what is considered
as the population base of those insurgents. Hence, this is the
trigger which is the cause of the devastating humanitarian disaster
that occurred with today 1.6 million people displaced and the
like. But the aspect of Arab versus Africans never occurred as
a people against people in the conflict thus far. The major Arab
groups in Darfur have actually deliberately—and in many
cases tried very hard—to stay out of conflict and not to
take sides in it. This is the case of several major Arab groups
in Darfur, such as the Rizeigat in southern Darfur. The reason
that they have not cooperated with the government strategy of
this Popular Defence Force is that in the war against the SPLA
in southern Sudan they found nothing of the promises that the
government said it would deliver to them. This time around they
said they will stay outside, despite pressures, intimidation and
incentives for them to join the fight. So what is happening right
now is that there is a gradual slide towards the tribalisation
of the conflict, the reason being therefore the emergence of ethnic
revenge, attempts to solicit and to stoke collectively actions
by a group against another.
Q7 Tony Worthington: Could I ask you
to talk about the last week or so because we have read the papers
on the background, for which we are very grateful? What we do
not have is what has been happening over the last week.
Dr Baldo: Over the last few weeks
there have been incidents of hostage taking; they signal a breakdown
in the rebel command, because it was rebels, particularly of the
SLA, that were involved in stopping buses, commercial convoys
and singling out people for detention and they have abducted,
for example, in late October, a group of 18 people of Arab origin
in North Darfur. The response has been of Arab militia detaining
several people of African origin in retaliation. So this indicates
a trend of polarisation along these lines, as I said earlier in
my explanation. It could also be argued that the entire population
of the internally displaced people (IDPs) of 1.6 million plus
is in a hostage situation of a sort. This is a population which
is over one million of African origin. They are in these camps
and they are unable to leave the camps out of fear of concern
for their own safety because they are subjected to harassment,
detention, attack by the Janjaweed that continue to roam these
camps. But there have been several incidents over the last few
weeks of the Janjaweed and other government militia roaming through
camps discharging firearms as IDPs tried to leave. These incidents
of collective intimidation, terrorisation of IDP groups were often
linked to attempts by the government to break down the larger
IDP camps; to force, therefore, IDPs to leave these camps, for
areas where the government would prefer to relocate them. The
motivation of the government here is one of security. The large
camps of 50,000 plus, 60,000 internally displaced people in some
of these camps are actually very near or sometimes within city
premises of the three capitals of the Darfur states.
Q8 Tony Worthington: These are so-called
"safe areas"?
Dr Baldo: These are what the United
Nations tried to establish as safe areas and that policy has terribly
backfired, and I will come back to this.
Tony Worthington: Can I hand over to
Ann Clwyd to take that forward?
Q9 Ann Clwyd: Before I get on to that,
what you are describing is genocide, is it not?
Dr Baldo: I do not want to go
into the legalistic definitions and the like. What I am observing
is a situation of massive violation of human rights that have
led to the uprooting of these huge numbers and the entire tearing
apart of the social fabric in Darfur. There is an international
commission now looking into these war crimes and one of its points
of mandate is to establish whether this is genocide or not. But
I do not want to go into this. For me there has been, definitely
from our perspective, a campaign of ethnic cleansing that took
place in Darfur; there has been a campaign of indiscriminate attack
against civilians—all against international humanitarian
law and international human rights law.
Q10 Ann Clwyd: For those of us watching
on television the horrible pictures that have come out of Darfur,
and seen the sufferings of the people, most of us feel that the
response of the international community, for instance setting
up safe areas which you have said does not work, I cannot understand
why you should be reluctant to describe what you have just talked
about as genocide.
Dr Baldo: This is the evidence
as we have established it. We cannot call this genocide until
we are certain in investigations that are now underway by an independent
international commission of inquiry, that is publicly mandated
to do it by the UN Security Council. But I want to come back to
the point you raised about the policy of safe areas. The international
community here is not the only one that has failed to respond
adequately. In the case of the policy of safe areas, which were
initiated by the Secretary-General's Special Representative to
Sudan and the Government of Sudan, it was in fact a total disaster.
It backfired. Why did it backfire? Because the government used
the pretext of establishing these safe areas and of extending
the perimeters of the safe areas to actually increase its military
presence and to encroach on areas under the control of the rebels.
Therefore, there was a pattern of increased violations of the
ceasefire between August and September, which has started actually
the current surge in the violence, directly linked to the policy
of safe areas, and each time the UN turned around and asked the
government why is it fighting, they say, "We are simply enforcing
the safe areas that we have agreed to establish." It was
this level of cynicism that has led the government to use a humanitarian
clause for military purposes, and this is the response of the
international community that has totally backfired and was a fiasco
and I could not condemn it sufficiently.
Q11 Ann Clwyd: In the past the Government
of Sudan established in the Nuba Mountains, for example, peace
villages. Given that I remember trying to visit the Nuba Mountains
some years ago when I was in the Sudan, of course there were no-go
areas for outsiders and we were not able to visit them, what is
the situation in these so-called peace villages in the Nuba Mountains
now?
Dr Baldo: The Nuba mountains,
since 2002 have witnessed a certain calm, a certain claim to normalcy
thanks to the ceasefire agreement between the SPLA and the government
in the Nuba Mountains. That was an agreement that was initiated
even before the initiation of the IGAD process. Therefore there
has been a movement of return of IDPs to their villages, there
have been cross line exchanges between populations and between
governments and SPLA officials. The situation is still there but
there has been much improvement since the period you have visited
in these areas, in this policy of peace villages.
Q12 Ann Clwyd: But is this not forcing
people to live in particular areas where they may not necessarily
want to live?
Dr Baldo: This was indeed a policy
of, I would say, social engineering at this time; that was in
the mid 1980s. The government physically transplanted people who
were displaced by the violence in the Nuba Mountains to areas
in the north of Darfur—that is to say areas that are totally
different from their home regions—placed them in these so-called
peace villages, subjected them to intensive programmes of repatriation,
culturisation, Islamisation. Even if they were Muslim it was not
judged of the right quality. They were taught how to dress, how
to circumcise, how to bury their dead, how to conduct their rights
of marriage and birth-giving and the like. And then when people
wanted to leave it was only men who were allowed to leave to search
for work—families were kept behind. It was an elaborate
policy that was done during a certain period of time with a view
to really change the social construct, the intellectual construct
of this population. It is a policy of engineering, in much the
same way as imposing fashion as imposing colonisation during the
colonial period, with the intent here being one of imposing Islamic/Arabic
culture on this population. It is true that the policy of safe
villages is in a way an indication of this continued pattern of
conduct of the Government of Sudan right through. What is happening
now, in Darfur there has been a lot of focus on what the government
is doing and therefore it is showing compliance while at the same
time being faithful to its objectives, whilst at the same time
pursuing the same strategic objectives using the same type of
tools.
Q13 Ann Clwyd: Do you think that the
international community has been reluctant to pressurise the Government
of Sudan on Darfur because they are afraid of disrupting the North-South
peace agreement? It looks as though that war may eventually be
coming to an end? Do you think they are afraid of putting pressure
because it may upset that?
Dr Baldo: This has indeed been
the case in late 2003, early 2004. The international communities,
when we did advocacy in the United Nations and with the Security
Council members, actually that was the argument too; that it is
not the right moment, we are very near the conclusion of a comprehensive
peace agreement, when that agreement is reached we are going to
resolve all these problems and Darfur should really wait. There
was pressure put on the Darfur rebels really to resist and disengage
and the like. The government has deliberately used that window
of opportunity to pursue its counter-insurgency strategy. Except
that the response was totally disproportionate to the threat posed
by the insurgency and the response has created a huge humanitarian
disaster which was impossible to ignore. Therefore, the response
of the international community has swung to the other extreme.
A lot of focus on Darfur, disengagement, lack of attention, lack
of follow-up on Naivasha, on the peace negotiations with the SPLA.
Again, that was an opportunity for the government to really slow
down and drag its feet in the Naivasha process with the hope that
it would get off the hook in Darfur. So it is a game of manipulation
in which the government has been very successful with its performance
so far—far better than the international community, I would
say.
Q14 Mr Colman: You are describing a situation
where you appear to blame the Government of Sudan for everything
that has happened, yet at the beginning of this meeting this afternoon
you were talking about the fact that the rebel movements had taken
up arms against the government to the country two years ago. In
the south there has been a terrible war that has gone on for some
30 years, many hundreds of thousands, nay millions of people have
died in that war of 30 years. Darfur was at peace. Is there a
responsibility for the rebels who have destroyed that peace rather
than perhaps what you keep emphasising, which is that it is the
Government of Sudan who has destroyed that peace in Darfur?
Dr Baldo: I would beg to differ
with the appreciation that Darfur was at peace. The origin of
this conflict goes back to the 1980s and since then Darfur has
not known peace. It has been living in a situation of destabilisation
and of violence that has received little attention. Particularly
the communities of Darfur, the Massaleit and the Zaghawa, whose
sons rose with this rebellion, have been subject to constant attacks
by marauding nomadic groups of Arab origin that have been, in
many cases, armed and recruited into government supported militias,
and whenever this community complained to local garrisons, to
policemen, to local officials of the Government of Sudan they
did not receive the attention or the protection they felt that
they were entitled to. The response has been the Darfur insurgence.
That being said, I would never claim that the rebels do not bear
a share of the responsibility. In particular over the last few
weeks there have been signs of the collapse or even in some cases
loss of control and command by the Sudan Liberation Army—and
that is very worrying—leading to incidences, as I was saying,
of hostage taking, incidences of attacks on humanitarian convoys,
incidences of livestock rustling from groups that are of Arab
background. Therefore, in creating the risk of frontal communal
fighting between Arabs versus non-Arabs that did not compose a
substantive part of the conflict so far. But Darfur has been in
turmoil for quite a long time and it is only now becoming known.
Q15 Mr Colman: What do you believe the
Government of Sudan should be doing to resolve this crisis?
Dr Baldo: The Government of Sudan
should really stop using ethnicity for political purposes, for
ideological purposes. It should really become a neutral player
amongst the communities of Darfur. It should disband the Janjaweed
and all other ethnically recruited militias in Darfur and elsewhere
in the country. It should hold officials of the Sudanese government
in the security sector, who engineered this policy of the Janjaweed,
responsible and end impunity overnight by really giving the example
of holding the people who committed war crimes, for example, in
Darfur responsible. It should cooperate with the efforts of the
international community to deliver aid and assistance to the victims
of the conflict. What the Government of Sudan needs to do is very
clear, very logical, but the government is not doing it, it has
its own calculations, it has its own objectives and the cost is
what we are witnessing. That is to say, its own citizens are being
attacked by its agents and by its own Army.
Q16 Mr Bercow: I wonder, Dr Baldo, what
your own assessment is both of the latest in the series of the
United Nations Resolutions and of the two past, respectively,
if I remember rightly, in July and September? I am sympathetic
to that body of opinion that says the international community
has done so far too little too late with too little effect. But
I would be interested to know what your own assessment of that
latest resolution is because Amnesty International, for example,
described it as a big step backwards, focusing, as it has done,
primarily on the North-South debate and largely ignoring the situation
in Darfur. So the previous two resolutions upset quite a lot of
people because they did not seem to do anything; they talked about
additional action and appropriate measures being taken, if they
wanted improvement, but they did not do anything immediately to
bring the government to heel. But this latest resolution focuses
on North-South. What does the ICG say about all that?
Dr Baldo: The latest resolution
in the meeting at Nairobi was meant really as a combination of
carrots and sticks in terms of offering the government some incentives
to conclude the peace process with the SPLA, the idea being that
if that agreement was concluded it would offer a model for resolving
other conflicts, particularly the Darfur conflict, which is really
what is preoccupying us. We have called for the international
community to approach the two problems at the same time, simultaneously.
Therefore, to demand that the government on the one side conclude
the comprehensive peace process with the SPLA but also on the
other side to comply with all the obligations which it has signed
to under the various UN Security Council resolutions in the previous
two resolutions, and in the agreement they signed with Secretary-General
Kofi Annan and his representative in July and August of this year,
which the government is not doing. The government is not meeting
any of its security obligations, it is not disbanding the Janjaweed
and in fact it has incorporated them in Popular Defence Forces,
border intelligence units, Popular Police, and therefore it continues
to arm and support them. The government has not stepped in to
end attacks on civilians and on internally displaced people of
Darfur, and it is not meeting any of its obligations that it had
formally signed to. We are demanding that the international community
move beyond threats and firm words, to considering steps to hold
the government accountable and implement some tough measures to
draw the attention of Khartoum. In particular we believe that
steps that could draw the attention of Khartoum should include
the extension of the arms embargo that was decided against the
non-governmental actors, the armed groups and therefore the rebels
and the Janjaweed, should be extended to cover the government
as well. We are calling for the African Union (AU) to be given
the mandate to monitor compliance with that arms embargo. The
government has signed to a flight ban drawn in their security
protocol signed in Abuja on 9 November. There are no measures
to enforce or to monitor compliance with that commitment. The
African Union could take that role by, for example, being given
the authority to be on government planes or military planes without
notice, and this would help to encourage the government to abide
by that commitment. We are calling for selective sanctions such
as directing government officials who are responsible for the
security measures that accompanied the counter-insurgency campaign
in Darfur and generated all this level of suffering and of the
violations of international humanitarian law. Therefore, the international
community has yet to do a lot. The situation calls for it and
if you do not pay attention, the current trend of escalation of
the violence will only lead to further suffering and to further
destruction of civilian life in Darfur.
Q17 Mr Bercow: Can I briefly follow-up
on that? From my own point of view it is extremely depressing
to reflect that I came back from a short spell in Darfur nearly
five months ago, and when I was there the government was anxious
to assure us that the problem was not that grave and it was being
contained and the situation was improving and that the situation
was not their fault, and all the rest of it, and now we witness
just how many lives have since been lost. So it is extremely frustrating
that progress has been minimal, non-existent and in some cases
even negative. What I would like to try to get from you, as you
are an authority on the field, Dr Baldo, in so far as you can
quantify it, is precisely how much impact each of the individual
sanctions would be likely to have on the situation and how long
it would take to have that impact? Some of us fear that things
like travel bans and asset freezes, which are talked about often,
which apply to all sorts of badly behaving regimes, including
Zimbabwe and Burma and so on, are very often rather token gestures
because there is no great enthusiasm on the part of the government
to travel to Europe anyway and they often do not have very large
personal assets in Europe. So, do you see what I mean, that these
are token gestures in many cases unless you can explain to me
otherwise. How long do you think it would take for an oil embargo
on the one hand and an arms embargo very rightly extended to apply
to the Government of Sudan on the other to bite, so that the people
in the Government of Sudan, who are not going to be swayed by
arguments based on morality, will be swayed by the application
of ferocious pressure. How long will that take?
Dr Baldo: It will take longer
than we would wish for because of the reality of the situation
in the Security Council with several permanent members having
interests in the Government of Sudan, in the area of oil, for
example, like China, like Russia in the area of sales of arms
and commercial interests for those in the country. China has specifically
threatened to veto oil sanctions if they came before the Security
Council and I believe that is the record of China, to oppose and
try to derail any attempt to impose sanctions anywhere in Africa.
The latest sanctions that were voted by the Security Council on
the Ivory Coast were done under direct request from the African
Union and therefore China could not be more catholic than the
Pope and they did not oppose this particular sanction. So that
is the exception to the rule rather than a new trend of conduct
from the Chinese. So I would believe that the Government of Sudan
is of course very much aware of all this and it is doing its level
best to really maintain the current status quo in terms
of its status before the Security Council. But some of these measures
would really draw the attention of the government in Khartoum
because this is a regime that is really very pragmatic; it is
really very business orientated to a degree which may not be known
internationally, and it is not, for example, an irrational set
of minds such as that of Iraq and Saddam Hussein or the Taliban
in Afghanistan. They would listen and register if the international
community says it is wrong, to address them, as we say, in a fashion
that would bite. Therefore some of these measures are actually
meant to draw that level of attention. Targeting officials—and
they are in the very core of the system—who are responsible
for this disastrous security policy in Darfur would really send
a very strong message that there is no longer any tolerance for
impunity, there is no longer any tolerance for those who engineer
massive violations of human rights and hope to get away with it.
This is what is happening. It may not be effective but it will
send the right message to the government in Khartoum.
Q18 Mr Colman: You mentioned in the case
of the Ivory Coast that China had not vetoed the Security Council
Resolution because the AU had actually asked for the Security
Council to pass such a resolution. What do you think is holding
back the AU from asking in the same way for action on Sudan? You
have described the ineffectiveness of the situation. Nobody seems
to be suggesting a direct intervention by the United States Army
or the British Army or the French Army. This is an AU situation
where the AU is calling the shots. I think that you are describing
them as being somewhat ineffective in terms of mobilising not
just the world community but also their own resources, to step
in and to sort out the situation.
Dr Baldo: The AU's mission and
involvement in Darfur is one of the rare bright spots in this
otherwise very gloomy situation. For the AU, Darfur is really
a test ground. They want to prove the capability of their peace
and security structures and it is the new mandate that was created
after the transformation of the Organisation of African Unity
(OAU) into the African Union. Therefore they have a larger peacekeeping
force, ceasefire and monitoring force on the ground, let us say,
and this force has been expanded of late. They are also the mediators
in political talks between the government and the Darfur rebels.
I believe the AU is very keen to keep the Khartoum government
engaged with the hope that they could, on the one side, contribute
directly to the protection of civilians by their mere presence
in Darfur, although they do not yet have many troops in Darfur,
and, on the other side, help find a permanent political solution
to the problem. If they call for sanctions, they may be feeling—and
this is speculation about the thinking of the AU—that the
government has shut them out or not co-operated at the security
level and at the political level. Having said that, I am most
surprised at the attitude of the UN Security Council in acting
with such speed and resolve, after the bombing of the French peacekeepers
in Ivory Coast, to impose sanctions, while in Darfur over 18 months
there has been a massive campaign of killings without really decisive
action of this nature being considered.
Q19 Mr Colman: You have said that in
the case of the Ivory Coast, the AU had asked the Security Council
to take the sanctions, but in the case of Darfur, the AU have
not asked the Security Council to take the actions. That is why
nothing has happened.
Dr Baldo: The Security Council
has its own mind and could have taken the initiative, given the
level of mass human rights violations in the country.
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