Global Policy Forum

By Somini Sengupta

Just two weeks after Sudanese authorities and their guerrilla enemies signed a preliminary peace agreement, a fresh surge of violence is engulfing Darfur with rebels sharply ratcheting up attacks, the government offering heavy-handed retaliation and large patches of this brutalized land becoming closed to relief efforts.

Neither the government nor the insurgents seem much bothered by the promises to restore security and broaden access to aid groups that they made in the agreement, which was reached Nov. 9 at talks mediated by the African Union in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Nor has the deployment of African Union troops stopped the violence. The roughly 1,000 soldiers who are here now, a third of the numbers expected, are authorized to do little more than monitor cease-fire violations. Even doing that in Darfur, an area in western Sudan equal to the size of France, is stymied by continued fighting and a lack of resources and labor.

The war that began here in February 2003 between the Arab-dominated government and rebels led mostly by black African ethnic groups from western Sudan has cut a swath of misery and tribal enmities across Darfur. And whatever respite from violence that was achieved over the last several months has steadily unraveled in recent days, particularly here in North Darfur. At dawn Monday, according to the United Nations, the rebel Sudan Liberation Army attacked a strategic town just west of here, called Tawila, killing nearly 30 police officers and taking control. The government responded with airstrikes, said civilians and aid workers fleeing the area. Rebels said the government then bombed a nearby S.L.A. base camp in a village called Thabit.

Insurgents from a second group, called the Justice and Equality Movement, seized another Darfur town, called Gereida, before pulling back. In a refugee camp in South Darfur, rebels struck at a police post in the middle of the night. Last weekend, rebel units battled government troops in Kuma, just north of here close to the rebel-held territory. On the edge of the Jebel Marra Mountains, in a town called Zalingei, several young Arabs were pulled off a public bus a few weeks ago. Suspected to be the handiwork of the S.L.A., that act of harassment was met with ugly retaliation: African civilians were detained by Arab militias for several hours before being released.

The human consequences of the recent rash of violent tit for tat are grim and getting grimmer. Practically all roads out of El Fasher, the North Darfur state capital, are off limits to aid workers for security reasons. As a result, more than 1,500 metric tons of food, which had been scheduled for delivery by the World Food Program this week to displaced people squeezed into towns just west of here, sits in a cavernous warehouse. "Now, we are grounded here in Fasher," a frustrated Manuel Aranda da Silva, the United Nations regional aid coordinator, said here on Thursday. "We can't move."

Mobile clinics that once traveled to rebel-held villages north and south of here are now staying off the road. Plastic tarps that were to be transported to a teeming camp for the displaced people on the southern fringes of El Fasher were turned back by the military on Thursday. Mosquito nets cannot be delivered to a malaria-prone area because of fighting and banditry on a vital stretch of road. Polio vaccinations have not been delivered to a section of West Darfur, because a new rebel group has emerged there and has refused to guarantee the safety of aid workers. The 21-month-old conflict in Darfur has already tested the resilience of Darfuris. Since March alone, according to the United Nations, 70,000 people have died of hunger and disease. Roughly 1.6 million people have been left homeless.

"There is increasing disintegration of the political landscape in Darfur," said Dominik Stillhart, head of a delegation for the Sudan office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Khartoum. "There are two overlapping conflicts, a traditional conflict over scarce resources and the more political conflict between rebels and the government. You don't know today which one is fueling the other one."

The problems are made worse by what appear to be contradictory bluster and promises from the rebel camp. It remains unclear whether the attack on Tawila, for instance, was ordered from on high or whether it was the result of a flimsy chain of command. (The rebels, for their part, say they did not attack the town, but chased government troops into Tawila after being attacked first.) Their message has been inconsistent as well. Rebel leaders late this week scrambled to publicize their commitment to a cease-fire, even after at least one of their representatives earlier in the week declared the truce to be over. "We are just defending ourselves," said Suleiman Jamous, a senior S.L.A. field commander, insisting that his group did not violate a peace deal. "We are still on our promise."

Many aid workers, afraid of giving their names for fear of jeopardizing their work, said rebel officials had made unreasonable demands on aid groups operating in their territory. At one point, for example, they said the rebels insisted that a certain number of expatriates accompany Sudanese staff (whom rebels distrust as potential government spies). Aid workers have also been detained in rebel territory in recent months.

The latest spate of hostage taking and attacks on government targets has brought unusually harsh criticism of the S.L.A. Alpha Oumar Konare, the chairman of the African Union Commission, released a statement on Friday in which he "condemns this escalating violence, which threatens the ongoing relief activities and places civilian lives at risk." There is little any outside authority, including the United Nations Security Council, can do to influence an insurgency group. "There's not much leverage," Jan Pronk, the top United Nations envoy for Sudan, said in an earlier interview. The Council has threatened economic sanctions against Khartoum for its part in the civil war.

Whether rebel leaders are stepping up attacks for the sake of trying to gain leverage at future peace talks in Abuja, or whether the attacks signal a breakdown in their command-and-control structure remains unknown. Whatever the case, it is clear, say aid workers, United Nations officials and senior Sudanese government officials, that the Sudan Liberation Army remains poorly organized, a force whose rank-and-file fighters may be unaware of the promises made by their political leaders. "Many of the commanders may not even know about the protocols," Mr. da Silva said.

Protocols notwithstanding, Bahria Mohammed Ahmed, a woman in her 30's, heard the rattle of gunfire early Monday morning while preparing breakfast. By the time she had gathered up her five children and fled on foot, government warplanes were circling overhead. This was her second time on the run. She had already fled her village, near Tawila, during a bout of fighting in the early days of the war. Her grandfather had been killed in that attack. On Monday morning, with her elderly mother aided by one of the children, Ms. Ahmed ran once more, this time to the Abu Shouk camp here in El Fasher. While on the run, she recalled bending down to adjust the baby tied to her back. When she looked up, two of her children were not at her side. She cried out their names, but ultimately in vain. She arrived in Abu Shouk on Wednesday without them, and this evening she scanned the horizon as the sun went down. Another batch of Tawila people were expected to be trekking across the desert to Abu Shouk.

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