Darfur peril remains

KHARTOUM, Sudan

Rodolphe Adada, the outgoing commander of the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, raised eyebrows in April when he said the conflicting in Western Sudan had quieted to a “low intensity conflict.”

Mr. Adada lifted those eyebrows further this week when he accepted one of Sudan’s top honors - the Order of the Two Niles - from Sudanese President Omar Bashir, the target of an international arrest warrant for war crimes charges in the Darfur conflict.

Mr. Adada, who stood down Monday as head of the Darfur peacekeeping force after a two-year mandate, received the award on a farewell visit to Lt. Gen. Bashir.

“I have achieved results. The main result is the end of massacres in Darfur,” he said in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

“We can no longer talk of a big conflict, of a war in Darfur,” Mr. Adada told the Associated Press. “I think now everybody understands it. We can no longer speak of this issue. It is over.”

The United Nations says conflict in the Darfur region has caused at least 300,000 deaths since 2003 and displaced 2.7 million people, while Sudan puts the toll at 10,000 dead.

“The enemies of Sudan were not pleased by the report of Rodolphe Adada on Darfur, therefore they refused to renew his office term,” Gen. Bashir said, according to official Suna news agency.

Activists and Darfur residents not only disagree, they fear that Mr. Adada’s remarks foreshadow a decrease in international focus on resolving the root problems in the troubled region.

The joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, or UNAMID, has recorded a sharp decline in fatalities from violence. There were 16 deaths in June, compared with an average 130 deaths per month last year.

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in Khartoum, claiming discrimination and neglect.

It galvanized global outrage, routinely being labeled the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and earning the label “genocide” from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell during the first George W. Bush administration.

But President Obama’s new envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, is offering an assessment similar to that of Mr. Adada. In June, he said the violence in Darfur no longer amounted to genocide and then suggested easing sanctions against the Sudanese government.

Adding to the complications, violence is on the rise on another front in semiautonomous southern Sudan, more than four years after a 2005 peace accord ended a separate 21-year civil war that left 2 million people dead. If violence there escalates, it could potentially overshadow Darfur.

During a visit to Darfur in July, Mr. Gration appealed to refugees in one of the largest camps to return to their villages. He also suggested easing sanctions against Sudan, telling a Senate hearing that month there was no longer any evidence to support the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

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