DISASTER IN DARFUR - UCSB Department of History - University of ...

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attention from Darfur by implying it is the price for a peace agreement at Naivasha. On
18 May Khartoum appeared to have received its reward when Secretary of State Colin
Powell announced that the Sudan would be removed from the list of those not fully
cooperating in the war on terrorism but not from the State Department’s list of state
sponsors of terrorism because of the government’s failure to close the offices of Hamas
and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Khartoum.
Despite the public outcry, declarations from the EU, and unanimous
Congressional resolutions from the US for “unconditional and immediate access to
Darfur to humanitarian aid organizations” who had yet to breach the walls of bureaucracy
in Khartoum in which the SLM/A and the JEM had not proved particularly helpful.
Indeed, the SLM/A has emphatically rejected aid coming from government held territory
on the likely assumption that it would simply give the janjaweed an excuse to attack the
SLA and loot relief goods given to the IDPs. Despite their dearth of political experience
they had learned not to trust Chad as a venue or as a mediator. They insisted, rather
unconvincingly, to be coordinating their positions to present a common front in any direct
negotiations with the GoS as they had done at N’djamena. Khartoum, however,
continued to remain aloof, delay, and manipulate. Having successfully lobbied the UN
Human Rights Commission not to re-institute the position of Special Rapporteur for
Human Rights convinced that the Security Council would not place ethnic cleansing in
Darfur on its agenda, the GoS brazenly mobilized support in the UN Human Rights
Commission not to consider the report by its own Acting High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, that described the “reign of terror….by the government of
the Sudan and government-sponsored” janjaweed.[“Report of the High Commissioner for