'...we have to show these people, these abids (slaves, blacks) who is the master here.' Eva Dadrian on the Arabisation of Darfur by Khartoum with a great deal of help from 'the brother from the North, Gadaffi'.

Since 2003, the international community, African heads of states, the African Union, the Arab League, the United Nations, numerous humanitarian organisations and a number of African or non-African 'intellectuals' have debated the meaning of the word genocide, and whether it can be applied 'accurately' to the tragedy that was taking place in Darfur. Whether there were 200,000 killed, or only 20,000, or whether the rebellion or the Sudanese army or the government-backed Janjaweed militias perpetrated the crimes, this kind of debate could go on ad infinitum as Kwesi Kwaa Prah rightly says (Pambazuka News 305).

But as these 'good wishers' were debating, the tragedy of Darfur was unfolding in front of their eyes. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians were killed, raped and uprooted from their homes and villages. Despite a ban on the media, despite the pressure on aid workers, the conflict in Darfur is very well documented, showing how entire communities were wiped out, how more than 800 villages were burnt to the ground and thousands of wells poisoned, mosques desecrated, schools destroyed, cattle slaughtered and crops ruined…

And the debate is still continuing while the people of Darfur are left in hellish IDP camps, in the middle of the desert, struggling to keep their children alive who are subjected not only to hunger, thirst, violence and diseases but also to humiliation for being destitute in their own homeland and having nothing to go back to.

Let’s not re-open this kind of discourse and 'indulge in technicist sophistry, tip-toeing nimbly around the real issues in Darfur' that may again provide 'solace to the Khartoum regime' (Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Pambazuka 305) and to others who persist to view the deployment of an AU-UN peacekeeping force as 'an invasion'. Darfur is neither Afghanistan nor Iraq, nor as a matter of fact Somalia.

Having said that I should emphasise also that Darfur is the microcosm of all the ills that mar the continent: Arab in the north versus Africa in the south. We could of course continue to blame the 'colonial borders' for these problems, but as Africans we had more than 50 years to solve our differences.

From the very beginning of the Darfur crisis, the government of Sudan proved time and again its unwillingness to look 'seriously and genuinely' into the demands of the people of Darfur. The numerous ceasefire agreements have collapsed for the very reason that the government of Khartoum has not kept its part of the deal, i.e. stop all its military operations and especially put an end to the crimes committed by the Janjaweed against the civilian population. The Janjaweed, the government-backed Arab militias, still roam free in Darfur. Driving pick-up trucks with mounted guns, they are 'not being arrested' according to AU commanders. The Abuja peace agreement signed between the government and one faction only of the Darfur rebel movement is not worth the paper it is written on.

Only recently, a small light has appeared at the end of the tunnel for Darfur. In mid-June, the Sudanese government announced its acceptance of the proposal for a hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping operation to be deployed in Darfur. Under the new revised plan, the AU will run day-to-day operations while the UN will have overall control of some 20,000 peacekeepers, mostly from Africa. Currently, as we all know it, the 7,000 ill equipped AU troops are overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of the region, the complexity of the conflict and the limitations of their mandate.

'The UN and AU have outlined two options for the size of the force's military component: under one plan, there would be 19,555 troops and under the other there would be 17,605 troops. The police component would require 3,772 officers. The hybrid operation is the third phase of a three-step process to replace the existing but under-resourced AU Mission in the Sudan (AMIS), which has been unable to end the fighting in Darfur.'

Ten days later, Lam Akol, the former southern Sudanese rebel leader turned minister of foreign affairs declared that his government was in complete agreement with the composition of the peacekeeping force, the nature of its operation, its mission and its command 'We are ready to have the force deployed at any time'.

Khartoum’s acceptance for the deployment of this hybrid peacekeeping force is a welcome step but it requires immediate and rigorous pressure from the international community and from Africans in particular, to make it happen.

So far, so familiar. Since the beginning of the conflict (February 2003) Omar el Beshir has disputed accusations, played for time, promised but never delivered and broke more agreements that he honoured. Khartoum has accused everybody except the Janjaweed militias. General Omar el Beshir had until the end of 2006 to disarm the Janjaweed, accept a hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force in Darfur or face the consequences.

Taking the Almighty as witness, El Beshir has vowed, time and again, he will not allow any UN peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur. A year ago, he announced that the situation in Darfur was 'under control'. But the sad reality is that the situation is far from being 'under control'. The same scenario is being repeated again as Omar el Beshir, who has skipped this year’s AU Summit in Accra, not only warned the West, and Washington in particular, not to mess up the handling of the crisis in Darfur, but also declared that calm has returned to Darfur and the IDPs are already going back to their villages 'We can say that most of Darfur's region is safe', and 'The situation on the ground in Darfur is improving. Now IDPs are voluntarily returning to their villages'. In fact, according to witnesses, villages are being repopulated indeed but not by their very former legal owners.

The old ambition of Khartoum successive governments to Arabise Darfur is being fulfilled. The so-called returnees are in fact entire families of the nomadic people who have for so long aimed at taking over the 'green pastures' and the fields of Southern Darfur and Gebel Marra. Not only, the long dream of Khartoum is being fulfilled but also that of Brother Gaddafi, the man with the floating robes and a fat chequebook. Indeed, back in the 1980s our Brother from the North planned to rid Darfur of its African population and replace them by Arabs. As Kwesi Kwa Prah points out the dear colonel while attending an Arab League summit meeting (Amman, October 2000) showed his true colours when he declared that 'two-thirds of Arabs live in Africa and the remaining third must join the other two in Africa...'

Needless to point out that those who refuse to recognise the genocidal plans of the Khartoum regime have neither seen nor heard of the Black Book. Secretly circulating in the late 1990s and very early 2000s, this infamous blueprint provides all the details of the soon-to-happen Darfur tragedy.

Just for information, I myself have seen the Black Book. Back in 1987, I also witnessed the destruction of the Fur villages in Gebel Marra. I have seen the horsemen of the apocalypse armed by Brother Gaddafi, who spread terror and destruction among the Fur community. I have also recorded Fadlallah Burma, Sadiq el Mahdy’s security suprimo, in those days, admitting that the government was arming 'the Arab tribes' and in addition I have also recorded a government official in Nyala telling me 'we have to show these people, these abids (slaves, blacks) who is the master here...'

'The international community simply cannot continue to sit by', said Condoleezza Rice at the end of an international conference in Paris about Darfur (June 2007). Of course this statement comes from a secretary of state who cannot claim to have a clear conscious when it comes to conflicts such as Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, to name just a few. But as Africans we cannot continue to sit by and allow rogue governments to send their troops to kill us, their planes to bomb us, their bulldozers to demolish our homes and their henchmen to intimidate us for the simple reason that we oppose their rule.

* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media.

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