Darfur

KHARTOUM, Sudan - British Foreign Minister Jack Straw spoke yesterday to fearful victims of violence sheltered at the Abu Shouk camp in the Sudanese region of Darfur and later warned that atrocities were continuing in the western area. Straw's comments came as Amnesty International reported that government bombing raids and attacks by militias continued to afflict villagers in Darfur. The London-based organization accused the Sudanese government of arresting and intimidating displaced people and others who spoke out to foreign observers about the crisis there.

The National Association of Evangelicals and the American Humanist Association might not agree on much. When it comes to abortion or homosexuality, the Union for Reform Judaism and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops find themselves on opposite ends of the debate. But when the subject is genocide in Darfur, all are on the same page. In what may be the broadest coalition of faith-based groups ever assembled for a political cause, Jews, Christians and Muslims, liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists are joining with humanitarian and human rights organizations to demand that the U.S. government end the killing in Sudan.

WASHINGTON -- With the Bush administration ordering new sanctions against the government of Sudan yesterday, experts said any hope of alleviating suffering in the war-torn Darfur region will depend on the questionable ability of the United States to gain broader international support. President Bush, declaring that the United States "will not avert our eyes" from a crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced at least 2 million others, imposed a ban on Americans doing business with 31 mostly government-controlled Sudanese businesses, two leaders of the Sudanese government and a rebel chief.

Darfur has taken on the shorthand status accorded Biafra and Bangladesh in a previous generation. The very word has come to represent horrible things happening to poor and defenseless people, held up to shame the rich and powerful world for its lack of action in stopping this injustice. For many who decry these atrocities, that is all they know, all they need to know. There is no doubt that Darfur fits that rather simplistic role. But there is also no doubt that no solution to its many problems will be possible without understanding its complexity.

FURBURANGA, Sudan - In the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan, the killers pray toward Mecca. The million displaced people do as well. Marauding men on horseback, the women raped by them, the rebels who incited the fighting, and the politicians, soldiers and police officers who have failed to control it - nearly all are Muslim. A man from one of Darfur's African tribes walked into an empty field near the refugee camp that he now calls home and prayed - for life to return to normal, for his family's suffering to end, for his fear to dissipate.

UNITED NATIONS -- Sudan accepted a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force yesterday of up to 23,000 troops and police to stabilize the war-torn Darfur region. But U.N. diplomats, cautious after months of waffling by the Sudanese government, were not ready to celebrate. The agreement came days before a Security Council mission to Khartoum to press for an end to the conflict in Darfur. At the end of a two-day summit of Sudanese, U.N. and African Union officials in Ethiopia, Sudan also agreed on the need for an immediate cease-fire and talks with rebel groups to end four years of fighting.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Armed men killed at least 10 African Union soldiers and seriously wounded seven in the deadliest strike against peacekeeping troops in the troubled Darfur region since they were deployed in 2004. A rebel faction in Darfur was thought to have carried out the assault, which began shortly after dark Saturday. Rebel groups had been fighting Sudanese government troops in the area in recent days. African Union officials said they could not comment on the suspected identity of the gunmen until an investigation is complete.

UNITED NATIONS -- A high-level U.N. mission to Darfur said yesterday that the Sudanese government had orchestrated human rights crimes against its own people and urged that leaders of Sudan's government and militias be charged with war crimes. But Khartoum is blocking United Nations attempts to stem the violence, organizing opposition to the mission's report and stepping back from its agreement to accept a joint U.N.-African peacekeeping force in the region. Sudan's government "has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes," according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

ISHMA, Sudan - Thousands of terrified Sudanese are again straggling into refugee camps in the Darfur region, driven from their villages by fresh violence that illustrates the challenges of ending the conflict here. United Nations and relief officials said yesterday that there had been an upsurge in violence this week in southern Darfur. Hege Ospeth, a spokesperson for Norwegian Church Aid, which runs a refugee camp in Bashom, said 5,000 new refugees had arrived from 10 villages that had been attacked by government-backed militias in the past week.

They range from Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Court, to Adam Sterling, a grass-roots organizer first seen hawking leaflets to apathetic strollers in Santa Monica, Calif. Success and failure in Darfur's life-or-death context generate excruciating tension. In this movie, the attempt of a World Food Program director, Pablo Recalde, to run delivery trucks through volatile territory sparks more nail-biting anxiety than any starship battle in a space opera.