Voice of America: Activists Say General Agwai’s Comments on Darfur Miss the Bigger Picture. A coalition of anti-genocide advocacy organizations has called on the Obama administration to team up with concerned nations and draft a proposal that would bring lasting peace to Sudan. The position came as the commander of the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur says the region was no longer in a state of war. “The fact that open hostilities between rebel groups and the government militias have dwindled is certainly a good sign that we are one step closer to what would hopefully be an eventual peace. But unfortunately it does not mean the situation is getting that much better for the millions of affected civilians who remain in Darfur,” said Alex Meixner, director of policy and government relations for Save Darfur Coalition.
MinnPost.com: War in Darfur over? Not quite. The war in Darfur is over? That’s what the outgoing general of the United Nations forces in that troubled African region says. “The political and humanitarian crisis in Darfur is not over. Nor is the threat of full-scale fighting over, said Sean Brooks, policy associate of Save Darfur Coalition. “We find Gen. Agwai’s statement surprising, considering that just a few weeks ago he said that the U.N. forces are only at 70 percent deployment and need to be fully deployed to protect the people of Darfur.
The New York Times: As Darfur Fighting Diminishes, U.N. Officials Focus on the South of Sudan. As the fighting in Darfur diminishes after years of conflict, senior United Nations officials say they are focused increasingly on the deteriorating situation in another part of Sudan: the south. The shift in alarm has been building for months, but was reinforced late Wednesday when Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, the departing commander of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, told reporters that the war in Darfur was essentially over. Senior United Nations officials said that while General Agwai was basically correct, they did not want to play down the dire consequences some three million displaced people face in Darfur. Still, they noted, the escalating skirmishes in the south could reignite the civil war there, which in years past proved far more deadly than the conflict in Darfur.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
