AFRICA/SUDAN - “More efforts from international community needed to end Darfur crisis” say Fides sources after agreement signed by Sudanese government and rebels

Thursday, 11 November 2004

Khartoum (Fides Service)- “This agreement is temporary like many others in Sudan. We have seen so many agreements stipulated and then violated. What is needed to end the crisis in Darfur is more effort on the part of the international community and the United Nations” local sources told Fides with regard to a partial pact between the Sudanese government and the rebels in Darfur. The salient point in the agreement was the installation of “no fly zone” for Sudanese aircraft and helicopters accustomed to striking villages in Darfur.
The agreement was signed on 9 November in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, the city which is hosting talks between Khartoum and guerrillas in western Sudan. The talks have been temporarily suspended in view of a final agreement expected to regulate the political status of Darfur.
Despite the agreement, Sudanese security forces raided a refugee camp in Darfur according to a report from the United Nations. “The Darfur crisis is difficult to defuse because it is complex and involves different factors: geographical, ethnic, political and economic” the sources told Fides. “The region has few resources and tribes fight over the best land. The government takes advantage of this strife arming Baggara shepherds who move south to escape the desert which is advancing in the north and use the fields of the local subsistence farmers to pasture their herds” our sources recall. “This is a conflict between Muslims because both the nomad and the sedentary peoples are followers of Islam. However we tend to forget about 1 million Dinka and Nuba, mostly Christians, originally from southern Sudan who fled to Darfur to escape from the fighting between the army and the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army). These refugees had settled and integrated fairly well with local farmers. Now they are forced to move again. They are twice refugees. This is a tragedy in the tragedy which the world ignores completely” the sources told Fides. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 11/11/2004 righe 30 parole 377)


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