Good article on the complexity of modern wars

This Washington Post article seems to suggest that wars are usually simple with clearly identified sides and driven by ideology. The reality has always been that wars - no matter how they may be perceived - have brought opportunists and power mongers to join in the fight from the time of the crusades to WWII to the present day wars. Rarely are the majority of soldiers in a fight in it for the ideology. Good article nonetheless. Helps to paint a better picture of why the Save Darfur campaigns in the west are simplifying the needed approach to this quagmire. The bag guys are not difficult to identify but the real question needs to be what to do about them.

Happy reading.

A wide-open battle for power in Darfur

Sudan conflict has fragmented into a free-for-all jeopardizing relief mission

By Stephanie McCrummen

The Washington Post

June 20, 2008

EL FASHER, Sudan - Five years after the Darfur conflict began, the nature of violence across this vast desert region has changed dramatically, from a mostly one-sided government campaign against civilians to a complex free-for-all that is jeopardizing an effective relief mission to more than 2.5 million displaced and vulnerable people.

While the government and militia attacks on straw-hut villages that defined the earlier years of the conflict continue, Darfur is now home to semi-organized crime and warlordism, with marijuana-smoking rebels, disaffected government militias and anyone else with an AK-47 taking part, according to U.N. officials.

The situation is a symptom of how fragmented the conflict has become. There were two rebel groups, but now there are dozens, some of which include Arab militiamen who once sided with the government. The founding father of the rebellion lives in Paris. And the struggle in the desert these days is less about liberating oppressed Darfurians than about acquiring the means to power: money, land, trucks.

Though there are some swaths of calm in Darfur, fighting among rebels and among Arab tribes has uprooted more than 70,000 people this year, compared with about 60,000 displaced by government attacks on villages, according to U.N. figures.

Although powerful countries such as China, which is heavily invested in Sudan's oil, have been criticized by human rights activists for not doing more to pressure the Sudanese government to end the conflict, some analysts say the breakdown of command lines on all sides has made the situation increasingly impervious to outside influence.

Humanitarian trucks carjacked every day
Meanwhile, the proliferation of banditry has become the biggest threat to humanitarian groups undertaking the largest relief effort in the world and to a nascent U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force. Their trucks and SUVs are stolen almost daily, used as fighting vehicles or sold for cash to middlemen who haul them to Chad and Libya.

Carjackings were once rare in Darfur, but 130 humanitarian trucks were taken last year, and the count so far this year is 140. Of those, 79 belong to the World Food Program, which sometimes recovers the trucks from the side of the road, abandoned by bandits who ran out of gas.

The insecurity has crippled food distribution. Last month, the organization was forced to halve rations for millions of people in camps and villages.

"This is a new dimension for us," said Laurent Bukera, head of the program's North Darfur Area Office. "This week, there's been a carjacking every day -- every day."

World Food Program truck driver Adam Ahmed Osman said the bandits who attacked his convoy were young, skittish amateurs.

They popped out of a dry riverbed in trousers and head scarves, pointing rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns at Osman's 20-ton truck and another returning from delivering food a few hours from this bustling market town.

The nine men told Osman and the other driver to lie in the sand. The attackers took their cellphones, Osman's watch and some money. Then came a question.

"One of the men got on the seat of the truck and asked, 'What is this?' " said Osman, who escaped unharmed with his colleague as the bandits made off with one truck. "I explained, 'It is a hand brake.' "

On a road leading south from here, carjackings are so frequent that World Food Program officials recently discussed using a helicopter to reach a camp of 50,000 displaced people that is a 30-minute drive away. Along a 30-mile stretch of road farther south are no fewer than 15 checkpoints manned by various militia or rebel factions. Heading west, Osman has been a victim four times.

Wild West style of banditry abounds
The Wild West style of banditry is not happening only along the roads.

In recent weeks, a group of disgruntled militiamen -- the notorious Janjaweed -- rode into El Fasher on horseback and attempted to rob the National Bank of Sudan, complaining that the government had not paid them.

During the first four months of this year, 51 humanitarian compounds in towns across Darfur were raided by armed men, compared with 23 during the same period last year, according to the United Nations.

Relief groups in El Fasher are topping walls with razor wire and taking other precautions. Oxfam workers have resorted to using banged-up rental trucks, taxis and even donkey carts to deliver supplies, hoping to make themselves less enticing to potential bandits.

The insecurity has not yet reduced the impact of the relief effort. Rates of infant mortality and malnutrition have dropped significantly since 2006, for instance. But in the nearby Abu Shouk camp, where tents have been replaced by mud-brick houses and walls spiked with broken glass to deter break-ins, people have noticed that humanitarian workers visit less regularly.

"They used to check on us every week," said Tigani Nur Adam, a teacher who has lived in the camp for five years. "Now, it's not so often."

Of the seven Oxfam locations in Darfur, four are accessible to workers only by air, said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the group who recently survived an assault on his compound.

"The conflict has become so much more complex," he said. "There were three rebel groups, and now I don't think anyone knows how many there are. . . . The lines of who's who are much more blurred."

Evolution of the conflict
It is a marked change from the beginning of the conflict in 2003, when the Sudanese government unleashed a brutal campaign to crush rebels who had taken up arms under the banner of ending decades of discrimination by a government of Arab elites.

Of the 450,000 deaths some experts estimate have been caused by the conflict, most occurred during the first two years, which produced the iconic images of Darfur: government planes bombing villages and allied militias rampaging on horseback, burning huts, raping women and killing civilians.

Though Arab and African ethnicities are very much intertwined in Sudan, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government used Arab nationalism, and money, as way to rally the landless, Arab nomadic militias against their farmer neighbors, who tended to identify themselves as African.

But the situation began to change in 2006, when only one rebel faction of the original Sudan Liberation Movement signed a peace deal with the government.

The rest of the rebels headed back to the desert and jockeyed for position as the divisions began: SLA-Unity, SLA-Free Will, Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance, National Redemption Front and so on. "There's no need of counting anymore," a U.N. official said, referring to the factions.

The one rebel group that remains militarily strong is the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM, which is backed by Chad and staged an attack last month on Khartoum, Sudan's capital, that failed to topple the government. So far this year, most government and militia attacks on villages have been in areas along the Chadian border controlled by JEM.

Otherwise, the Sudanese government has little need for military action, as Darfur is at war with itself.

Arab tribes are fighting one another over land, cows and other spoils of war. Disillusioned Janjaweed militiamen, abandoned by the government, have joined rebels and government soldiers in the business of looting, carjacking and petty shakedowns.

"Everybody is guilty," said Col. Augustine Agundu, chairman of the peacekeeping mission's cease-fire commission, who reserved special wrath for the rebels. "Emancipation, ending discrimination, that was their drive at the beginning, whereas today they don't know what they want."

Peacekeepers in the middle
The peacekeeping mission is in the middle of it all, saddled with the high expectations of advocacy groups that simply want the conflict to end.

The hybrid U.N.-African Union force, known as UNAMID, technically took over from an underfunded, underequipped African Union force of about 7,000 soldiers in December, but little has changed. The first new battalions have not yet arrived, nor has any new equipment.

The soldiers are authorized to use force to keep peace and protect civilians under imminent threat, but commanders fear that opening fire would jeopardize the mission by making it a party to the conflict.

Last month, bandits on horseback attacked a UNAMID commander and several peacekeepers, who surrendered their weapons and truck.

"What we are here to do is talk, not shoot," said Gen. Martin Luther Agwai of Nigeria.

That is all that Osman, the truck driver, can do, too. He's learned to sweet-talk the bandits, whom he often presumes to be rebels. Sometimes, he tries to shame them, explaining that he is bringing food to people who need it. The approach seems to have worked so far.

"I am from Darfur, and these people outside are our relatives," Osman said. "So I have an obligation to take food to them."

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

NOrmal? NOrmality? NO

"It appears that the situation is returning to normal, and so we are going back to the camps," said Annette Rehrl, spokesperson for UNHCR.

Read this quote in the article below and tell me if you would ever use the word "normal" to describe a situation where over 200 people were killed or wounded just 48 hours ago in a major military battle. Another Nubian Knight perspective that war is bad, but living in a war zone is "normal." Someone described this situation as frogs in a pot. It is a strange fact that if you try to throw a frog into boiling water it will jump out immediately. Actually that is not the strange part. But if you throw a frog into a pot of cold water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will stay and eventually cook to death. It is said that we who choose to work in a war zone are frogs in a pot. When we arrive things are bad but tolerable and as the heat is increased we stay put gradually adjusting to the increase in temperature. Fortunately, few of us of ever been cooked or our case killed or injured would the more appropriate term. But it does take a toll on the psyche and I think that is one area that few of us explore.

What state of mind do we emerge from a war zone?

Ask the men and women who come home from Iraq without a physical scar but lots of conditioning that comes from adjusting to this environment. Some suffer from depression because the mind produces lots of endorphins (a chemical that trigger pleasure in the body in reaction to stress) when you are in the field and then stops suddenly when you return to a less threatening environment. The body becomes hooked and depression sets in as you ride the rough road back to sobriety.

In World War II and in Vietnam, we called it shell shock but it had nothing to do with being in the vicinity of an exploding shell. It was the rough adjustment in returning to a place that had become foreign, after being forced to adapt for extended periods of time to a war environment.

On that note, everything here in Fasher is normal.

There is a very high-level visitor from Khartoum and there are troops everywhere keeping the streets orderly and safe for the second highest member of the national political party after President Bashir. El Fasher has never had a visit from such a high-level politician since the war began. This visit is a some significance I am sure. But I am not qualified to say what that significance may be.

It is hot, hot, hot outside. We have no hot or cold water here, though we have the standard two faucet sinks with the words COLD and HOT written on each. So it is interesting that tap runs so hot that it is actually scalding at midday. That IS room temperature. So, I wonder how my vitamins and medicines are doing. Might be time to refrigerate the lot, if it isn't already too late.

Anyway, as my mind starts to wander, I thought it best to hand this last entry over to the web and give you the article I promised at the start.

Aid Resumes As Conflict Abates

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

NEWS
19 June 2008
Posted to the web 19 June 2008
Ndjamena

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR resumed its humanitarian operations in all 12 refugee camps along Chad's eastern border with Sudan on 17 June as conflict abated in the east.

"It appears that the situation is returning to normal, and so we are going back to the camps," said Annette Rehrl, spokesperson for UNHCR.

Calm was restored as the Chadian government claimed victory on 17 June following fighting with rebels in Am Zoer, a town 89km northeast of Abeche, which left 161 rebels and three government soldiers dead according to Chadian military spokesperson Mahamat Hassan Abakar, speaking on the radio on 17 June. These figures have not been confirmed by rebel leaders.

Abakar said the army had seized 61 vehicles, as well as weapons and ammunition, during the fighting. According to a journalist in Am Zoer, dead bodies and burned vehicles can still be seen on the town's streets.

"It is the end of the Sudanese adventure," said governor of Ouaddai region, Bichara Issa Djadallah, echoing Chadian government accusations - denied by Sudan - that its eastern neighbour is behind the attacks. According to government sources, rebels are now scattered across the area and some have returned to Sudan.

Rebel columns entered eastern Chad on 13 June, and attempted to take the towns of Goz Beida, Am-Dam, and Biltine. Rebels commanders told journalists that their objective was the capital N'djamena, which rebels also attacked in February.

Major General Touka Ramadan Korei, commander of operations for the Chadian army, announced on the radio, "the intention of the mercenaries was to attack Abeche, but they fell into our trap."

In Abeche people are now going about their daily business. "The market is teeming with people as usual," said one resident.

"Chad is very volatile and it's very difficult to predict what may happen next here," UNHCR's Rehrl said.

Desert conflict heating up

Chad accuses Sudan of cross border attack as rebels advance

NDJAMENA (AFP) — Chad on Tuesday accused soldiers from neighbouring Sudan of attacking one of its frontier garrisons, as rebels opposed to Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno claimed further advances on the capital Njdamena.

"After despatching columns of mercenaries to Chad and failing to secure strategic areas, the Sudanese army took matters in its own hands today and attacked Ade, backed up by helicopters," a Chadian government statement said.

"By openly engaging their troops and air force, Khartoum has finally thrown off its mask," it said, warning that Chad's "response will be sterner than Sudan is expecting."

There was no independent confirmation of the border attack.

Relations between Chad and Sudan have been difficult for more than five years with the two countries regularly accusing each other of supporting rebel factions fighting against their respective regimes.

Diplomatic relations broke off in mid-May after an attack near the Sudan capital Khartoum by a Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement. Ndjamena denied any involvement.

Chadian rebels claimed Tuesday they had wrested control of another eastern town and captured a senior military officer after fresh fighting.

"We have taken Am Zoer after violent clashes. We took prisoner a chief of the garrison," spokesman for the National Alliance rebel grouping, Ali Gueddei, told AFP by telephone.

Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana Tuesday defended the role of the European Union force in Chad, or EUFOR, and rejected accusations by President Deby that it was partisan and favoured the rebels.

"The force's mission hasn't changed," Solana said in Paris.

"There is no other function than the function chosen for the force. Everyone is strictly acting within the mandate," he said.

EUFOR is stationed in eastern Chad to protect displaced people and refugees fleeing from war-ravaged Darfur in neighbouring Sudan.

Deby on Monday accused had EUFOR of cooperating with rebels.

"We welcomed EUFOR with joy ... but it took us by surprise to see, in the first hostile situation, this force cooperating with the invaders," the president said in a televised address.

"We have the right to question the effectiveness of this force and how useful its presence is in Chad," he said.

The mainly French EUFOR force, expected to reach 3,700 soldiers, was sent to Chad in mid-March for one year to help facilitate humanitarian work and protect refugees.

Fighting near Goz Beida -- where some 80,000 displaced Chadians and 36,000 Sudanese refugees are camped -- on Saturday saw the Irish EUFOR soldiers exchange fire with unidentified gunmen. There were no apparent casualties.

The rebels said on Monday they wanted to reassure the non governmental organisations. Gueddei said their safety would be guaranteed by the rebels.

Heavy clashes were reported Monday near the town of Biltine, some 750 kilometres (470 miles) east of Ndjamena. The attack on Am Zoer marked a further westward step by the rebels.

They have vowed to attack Ndjamena, in a repeat of an unsuccessful coup attempt in February.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Monday in a statement that the Chadian army had sealed off the city of Abeche as the security situation deteriorated.

Abeche, in eastern Chad, is the main operating base for the Chadian army, as well as UNHCR. As such, the agency said the lockdown on the city was "making movement very difficult".

Good days and Bad Days. Mother always said...

Today was a good day for programs. After completing a training workshop, participants are out applying what they learned with flying colors. Really felt good about that today. Spent a little too much time in the sun monitoring their work, but came home with a smile on my face.

Then the emails came...

I am on my last nerve with regards to my living situation in El Fasher. I have a room with four walls and no closets of any kind. I mentioned before that I have no living room or dinning room. Just a bedroom and a separate kitchen and bathroom. What I have not shared perhaps is that the bedroom is not yet furnished. I have been using the window seals to stack my clean clothing and my suitcases to house my dirty laundry. A promise was made to purchase a cabinet and decent bed (mine is made of strings stretched across a metal frame and a thin cotton mattress that you could squeeze in two with one hand), a table, and dinning room furniture for that future date when a team would build an outdoor structure to lounge about on my ever elusive time off.

But nothing appeared. No furniture was purchased and when I returned from my short break in May, I decided to buy a cabinet to finally unpack my clothes after 5 months of being in Darfur. I had received permission to use program funds to do so, since all other ex-pats have been alloted furnished apartments and mine is the only unfurnished residence. Long story short, I received two emails today explaining that I should not have made the decision to purchase the item, that my taste may not match the next occupant of the room, that I did not follow procurement procedures (which apparently must take at least one year), and that I must reimburse the organization for using project funds.

Now what do you call an organization that expects 110% from its employees but gives less than 20% in the form of support? I am really at a loss for words. The first thing that leaps to mind is to give notice and wait for a replacement to take over. I did not sign up to put out these many hours with literally no support from headquarters or from the local team.

Non negotiable

Now I know that none of this is done with any malice but it nonetheless leaves me with no support and it is difficult to give all my attention to a job when I cannot sleep at night and cannot get settled. Just a few months ago, the head office informed me that I could no longer ask the Sudan office in Khartoum to help book my flights. The memo also stated that this was a final decision that was not open to negotiation. I replied that I would need to buy a 400 dollar RT ticket to fly to Khartoum to book my ticket and then stay in a 150 dollar a night hotel while waiting for my return flight. In short, it would cost me nearly 600 dollars to book a ticket. Three days later, I was informed that the memo had been rescinded.

That in itself tells me that my organization just does not have a clue about who we are and what we are experiencing on the ground. Not sure who is charged with that responsibility but it is clear that we are not getting through.

Not sure how I will feel about this in the morning - seeing as I do not get a good night's sleep here - but I sent a very strongly worded email about my situation and sought clarity about how soon I should expect resolution. Giving notice still seems like a good idea. The organization took five months to get someone to fill my position. I have just 6 months left on this contract before I am asked if I will be renewing for an additional nine months. The kind thing would be to give notice now and then give them a January date by which to find a replacement. Six months is a long time. It will be interesting to see how I feel in the morning about all this, especially when I read the response to my email.

The situation in Chad continues to boil with lots of new clashes (click here for more news) and big talk on the government and rebel side. Here in Fasher the situation is quiet.

Thanks for reading my rant of the day.

Trouble on the Border ... Again

War is brewing on the border between Sudan and Chad once again. You may recall my February blog when it appeared that the Chadian rebel coalition had managed to topple the president of Chad only to see Sudanese rebels cross the border to retake the capital and restore President Deby to power.

We are seeing the same scenario played out all over again except this time the rebels have more vehicles - 700-800 reportedly - and more men - 7-8,000 again reportedly. Thus far, the rebels have managed to take a key town in south east Chad but they are still far from reaching the capital city which lies several hundred sandy miles to the west.

Hard to say what the Sudanese rebels will do in this situation. Fighting has flared up all around North Darfur in the past 10 days. Difficult to imagine these rebels leaving their current dug-in positions to run to fight a war in Chad, but I may be underestimating the resolve of these groups to fight.

In the meantime, we are all hoping that this renewed fighting will not mean more people being displaced from their homes. The rainy season is coming and this is the time when most will make a desperate attempt to return to their land if only to plant food for the coming season. Even those from burned out villages will leave the camps for a few weeks to till the soil and prepare their lands for a new harvest.

The arrival of the rainy is also the reason for the latest push to take power. Once the rains come to the desert, it will make movement very difficult in wet sand. Dry river beds will become raging rivers, and sand storms will make it very difficult to navigate.

Here's to hoping that the rains win and people can return to the business of survival instead of killing.

News on the conflict in Chad : CLICK HERE

News Flash: Darfur is dangerous

Darfur Crime Wave Threatens the Most Vulnerable

Another article that states the obvious. But very good intro so I recommend reading it.

Here is an excerpt:

A crime wave has taken hold of Darfur. Carjackings, armed robberies and the occasional murder largely have targeted aid workers, who now say they long for an easier time in the region — when all they had to worry about was war between Darfur's rebels and nomads and the Sudanese government. The roads were safer then. In humanitarian circles, war is easy. Crime is hard.

On Monday last week, it happened to UNICEF. On Tuesday, it happened to Doctors Without Borders. And on Wednesday, on the road outside El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, it happened to a truck driver called Adam Ahmad Osman.

Nine armed bandits hijacked the World Food Program truck that Osman was driving. He was on his way back from delivering hundreds of tons of food to displaced people living in camps, so the truck was empty. It's the fourth time he has been robbed in a little more than a year. And he has every reason to believe it will happen again.

Banditry, the scourge of any war-torn frontier, is flourishing in Darfur. Nearly every aid organization has been hit, and even Sudanese government ministries have been carjacked. This year, bandits have snatched 76 World Food Program trucks; 35 drivers are still missing. And yet, when people commit such
crimes, they end up robbing themselves.

Power outages

We are experiencing something brand new in Fasher. Power outages that are reported due to the fact that the military has taken all the fuel needed to power the city's generators, so that it can launch a military campaign somewhere. The reports of attacks two days ago in the vicinity may have provoked this need for a military response, but taking all the fuel? That has left many of us wondering when power will return. Some are guessing a few days until more supplies can reach us from Khartoum. In the meantime, the heat continues to rise and Fasher is a peaceful as ever.

Crime is definitely up but it usually involves men pushing guns in your face and you releasing your vehicle and personal belongings to them. The carjackings are rarely violent but the risk is there. Too many people have been injured physically or psychologically when abducted along with the vehicle into the desert and left to make their way back to a town for help.

What is different for Fasher today is that the car jackings are happening in the center of town and in broad daylight. The criminals are getting braver. Vehicles are usually recovered the same day they are stolen but it is no less rattling for staff who have to travel routes with reputations for highway robbery.

The one way to respond to this is to travel less to the field or to rent cheap and undesirable vehicles. But that is not an option for NGOs who deliver food to the vulnerable in the rural areas. You want a reliable vehicle to cross the desert, and so do the criminals.

Hard choices to make.

SCHOOL: IN one place and OUT the other

While children in my hometown are watching the clock and counting the days til summer, the kids (and their parents) in Darfur are shopping for that all important first day of school. It is all about the newest backpacks, colorful headwrap (with glitter this year), and sandals. No one would be caught dead in LAST YEAR's fashion. Have to dress to impress. I do not speak Arabic well enough to catch all the finer points, but that was the gist of a conversation between a mother and her two school aged kids. They were just not having mom's suggestions for the sturdier, jean backpack. Many faces, stares, and stomping abouts later and mom was handing over the 5 Sudanese pounds price for latest in camouflaged school wear.

Sudanese children wear school uniforms. In some areas, the uniform is actually a loose copy of the camouflage blue or grey that the military and police where everyday. I have heard of some areas of the country where the youth demonstrated for the right to wear non militaristic uniforms, but the majority of kids really go for it. The backpack of choice this year is a small, soft bag with sandy and brown patterns. Perfect for blending into the environment on a long trek home.

The school year is about the same length as in the US but they take a break just before the start of the hot season to allow the kids to play and be spared the hottest period. The idea is that by the time the rainy season arrives in June, the kids will have finished preparing the fields for crops with their parents (okay, not all play) and will be free to focus on learning. This week all the elementary schools went into session and next week the secondary schools follow suit.

El Fasher seems very peaceful. Market is bustling with activity and no gunfire at night to speak of. I am having a terrible time getting to sleep however and really need to just have a bed shipped from the states since my organization seems unable to get me a decent mattress shipped from Khartoum now 2 months after my last request. Still wake up with the blasting of automatic gunfire. Who needs an alarm clock?

I was disturbed to read an article today that suggests that things are not as peaceful as they appear to be in this area. The locality (administrative unit) to the east of me has been embroiled in some nasty fighting this week. Although it looks like a stone's throw on the map, the lack of roads and deep sand require nearly 4 days to cross about 200 km. Not something I will be trying anytime soon.

You can read more about the recent events in this article with the inventive title : Sudan Soldiers and Rebels Clash in Darfur. Not exactly a shocker. Try 'Sudan soldiers and rebels exchange gifts and rebuild homes.' Now that would be a surprise. Anyway, you can read the article by clicking on the headline itself.

For those who are click aversed, the article talks about a pretty large battle between the government forces and SLA-Unity (a newly formed group that has ties to the group that attacked JEM). The death toll has only been reported on one side, so I do not think it even bears repeating. They are usually completely made up.

Lots of programs have started and I am plenty busy. Hope to update this blog more regularly but field travel makes it difficult to get my hands on an internet connection.

Hope this entry finds you all well.