Global Policy Forum

By Marc Lacey

The Bush administration is considering toughening its policy toward the government of Sudan over the events in Darfur, the western region where thousands of people have been killed and more than a million driven from their homes by Arab militias that many in the region say are linked directly to the Sudanese Army.

Bush officials say they are considering whether what is happening in Darfur amounts to genocide. So far, the administration has only used the term ethnic cleansing. The officials say they are also considering sanctions on individual Sudanese officials tied to the displacement.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the link between the militias, known as the Janjaweed, and the Sudanese government was strong, and that many people are still at risk of dying in Darfur and across the border in Chad. "Without having a full intelligence report in front of me, what I am confident of saying is, clearly, we believe that the government of Sudan did provide support to these militias," he said.

Mr. Powell steered clear of the term genocide in describing the events in Darfur but said that administration lawyers had begun a review to determine whether the conditions for genocide have been met. Such a determination would increase the pressure on the United States, a signatory to the United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to more actively intervene in the region. The treaty describes genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

There is disagreement within the administration on whether the situation in Darfur rises to the level of genocide. Some of the opposition is based on a legalistic reading of the definition and a desire not to overstate the case. There is also concern about the diplomatic fallout of such a declaration, since the Sudanese government has made significant progress in negotiating an end to the war with southern rebels, a conflict that has stretched on for the last 21 years.

Ten years ago, Clinton administration officials were hesitant to use the word genocide to describe the events in Rwanda, and former President Clinton later apologized for the delay. Mr. Powell has privately expressed his desire to prevent a similar incidence of mass death on his watch, officials said.

"I'm not prepared to say what is the correct legal term for what's happening," Mr. Powell said. "All I know is that there are at least a million people who are desperately in need, and many of them will die if we can't get the international community mobilized and if we can't get the Sudanese to cooperate with the international community. And it won't make a whole lot of difference after the fact what you've called it."

Mr. Powell said the administration was studying whether to impose sanctions on individual Sudanese officials. The United States House of Representatives recently approved a resolution urging the administration to freeze the personal assets of individuals involved in the displacement in Darfur and ban them from traveling to the United States.

This week the leaders at the Group of 8 summit issued a communiqué calling on Sudanese officials to disarm the militias that "are responsible for massive human rights violations in Darfur." On Friday, the United Nations Security Council called for a halt to fighting in Darfur and urged the creation of a peacekeeping force in southern Sudan once a final peace deal is reached there.

Mr. Powell said he remained confident that the peace negotiations in Kenya, which have reached a series of significant accords, would be successful in ending a separate conflict between the Sudanese government and a group of southern rebels. The United States has pushed hard for an end to that war and has dangled the possibility of a peace dividend if a final deal is struck. But Mr. Powell said his message to Sudanese officials is "don't think that when you have that comprehensive agreement all of the benefits that you expected from that comprehensive agreement will flow in light of the continuing problem in Darfur."

Sudanese officials have expressed befuddlement at the strong American criticism. "It's calm here now," a Sudanese official from Nyala said recently.

When visitors have come to Darfur, Sudan's government has put on an elaborate show to prove it. At a recent meeting, for instance, a United Nations entourage was treated to a dance performance. Drummers came onto the stage at the government guesthouse and pounded away as women in billowy robes gyrated around them. First came the Fur, one of the ethnic groups that has been under attack by pro-government militias. Then other ethnic groups danced their traditional dances, too.The government portrayed the evening as a sign of how harmonious things really are in Darfur. "What you saw here is very different from what you expected in Darfur," a government official told the visitors with a smile.

But a recent visit to some of the camps for internally displaced people that have been set up across Darfur made clear the gravity of the situation. The desperate squatters, numbering a million or more across Darfur, tell stories of murder, rape and harassment. Aid workers speak of growing sickness and looming death. Even with government officials standing within earshot, the displaced residents said government soldiers had attacked them in tandem with Janjaweed.

The government denies any links with the Janjaweed. It also dismisses the notion that ethnic cleansing or genocide has been committed in Darfur. The Sudanese president, Omar el-Bashir, told the foreign minister of Egypt, Ahmed Maher, in Khartoum this week that the situation in Darfur was quiet and normal, and that foreign governments were blowing the events there out of proportion, according to the Egyptian news agency MENA.

But when a government supporter made a similar contention to the United Nations delegation that visited Darfur recently, his words almost started a brawl. At a camp outside Nyala, elders in white robes told Tom Eric Vraalsen, the United Nations special envoy for humanitarian affairs in Sudan, about the desperate conditions they were facing.

"There is not enough water," said one of them. "There is not enough medicine. There's a large number of people here and there's not enough food."

But after the descriptions of suffering had stretched on for a while, a man jockeyed his way to the front and told Mr. Vraalsen that the complaints were exaggerated. "Many things said are not correct," said Mohammed A. Rahman, an Arab who has loyalties to the government in Khartoum. "The government is taking care of us."

Angry villagers surrounded Mr. Rahman a short time later, denouncing him for not telling the truth and ripped the neckline of his robe. Police officers and soldiers then moved in to disperse the gathering. Some of the security forces were in uniform. Others were in civilian dress. They carried a variety of weapons, including automatic rifles, sticks, whips and knives. At the sight of them, the villagers ran for safety.

Janjaweed fighters could be seen roaming Darfur's rugged landscape, riding horses and camels and carrying guns. Government officials have branded them as outlaws and deny any links between these men and the army.

"The government didn't give anybody arms to fight on behalf of it," Jadain Jud-Allah Dagage, the minister of social affairs in south Darfur, insisted in an interview. But another official provided a more complicated version of events the next day, one that did not correlate with Khartoum's stance.

Ahmed Angabo Ahmed, the commissioner of the Kas region in south Darfur, said that to control attacks by anti-government rebels within his jurisdiction, he had sought permission last year, and received it, from the central government in Khartoum to enlist some of the armed robbers into the police and army forces. "We put these bandits as soldiers and they said they would never rob again," he said.

Many were already armed when they joined the government, so Mr. Ahmed said he exchanged weapons with them. "I said, you come and give me your gun and I'll give you a government gun," he explained. The recruits needed jobs, Mr. Ahmed said "They are not carpenters or drivers," he explained. "All they know is how to use a gun."

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