| Felisa Tibbitts, Executive Director of HREA, was in Sudan in June to evaluate the effectiveness of training for the African Union peacekeeping forces. She kept a blog while traveling to the various regions of Darfur.
 Last day in Sudan
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
After splendid isolation in the hotel, writing and editing from 9:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. with breaks only for food, the evaluation report was finalized on Monday, June 25th. We submitted it in the afternoon to our UN counterparts via e-mail, in preparation for a meeting the following day to discuss the results.
After the document was sent off I took a long walk along the Blue Nile, watching storm clouds gather in the northwestern section of Khartoum. Rainy season is starting in Sudan. It comes with brisk breezes and visual effects nearly identical to the dust storms that sweep the country. Oddly tinted haze envelopes everything in sight, bringing the feeling that something much grander is around you, of which you are only a small part. It seemed a fitting end to my last full day in Sudan.
We presented the report on Tuesday and were grateful to know that it was well received. The final leg of the trip will be in Geneva for another de-brief at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and a final chance for revisions to the report. The report was submitted at the same time that the news came of a six-month extension of the African Union Forces in Sudan. This period is expected to be the final period before the hybrid force comes into being. These six months, then, will hopefully be a transitional phase for AMIS and a beacon for renewed hope that a new peace agreement can be reached along with improved security for Darfurians. I know that I will be watching very closely - from a safe distance - as will many of us.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 20:32
Back in Khartoum
Saturday, 23 June 2007
The flight back to Khartoum was uneventful although there was an amusing episode as the straggling Westerners ended up being taken from the airport to the AMIS check-in center on the back of a flatbed truck. On the steamy wooden floor of the truck, I leaned back on some soft luggage and surrendered to the hot Khartoum breeze while having a bird’s eye view of downtown traffic and the mini-taxis that one sees throughout the capitol.
My evaluation colleague, Peter, wisely opted for a nice hotel as we would be spending our final week holed up writing our final report. The Grand Holiday Villa is a stunning colonial-era hotel located on the banks of the Blue Nile. The name Blue Nile is a misnomer, of course, as the water is brown. But the vista is a wet one, that alone unique for Sudan.
As we work on the report in Khartoum, I find myself rediscovering the simple pleasures of drinking water from glasses rather than plastic bottles, wireless Internet connection, hot water; and more than two food choices on the menu. Also, rather than the haggard faces of ex-pats there are well-dressed Arabs meeting for tea in the lobby. The environment is rich, even luxurious. Although I might have felt embarrassed by this contrast with Darfur, in fact I am relieved.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 20:21
Abu-Shouk
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
I had an unexpected surprise in El Fasher at an UNMIS meeting, when a human rights protection officer I met with turned out to be a former student. He organized a small dinner party for our last night in Darfur, full of Indian delicacies that he had brought back from his most recent trip home to visit family. It was an evening filled with fun and a great deal of sentiment, as I learned about Sadiq’s unique work supporting early recovery programs with the women of Darfur and the other activities he had undertaken with peacekeeping forces over the last four years. Sadiq promised to take me to an IDP camp the following morning, just before I was scheduled to fly back to Khartoum.
The camp is called Abu-Shouk, and is located on the outskirts of the town. In fact, there are two camps adjacent to the town, with a total of around 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). I had seen these settlements from the air when landing in El Fasher, but the endless vista of mud and thatch houses in their private compounds brought home the vastness of the resettlement. Moreover, the structures did not look temporary. People seemed to have settled in.
As I entered the camp I saw an area where bricks were being prepared and then fired – a booming enterprise among IDPs. Huge craters pocketed nearby areas, where sand had been removed to prepare the bricks. There were also fenced-in enclosures where large amounts of livestock were kept and people going about their daily business, much like they appeared to in downtown Fasher.
This particular camp received assistance from the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which had a large tent that served as a women’s health center. Sadiq drove me quickly to some service centers that were available in Abu-Shouk, including a Justice and Confidence Centers (alternative dispute resolution and paralegal services) and a CHF community center, where I saw the fuel-efficient stoves I had read about, a group of children having a lesson, a room where women gather to make handicrafts in order to generate some small income, and an enthusiastic game of volleyball being carried out by some young women.
The visit was too short but it gave me some impressions, which my companion supplemented with details on camp life before driving me to the airport for my flight back to Khartoum. I left the camp with two stinging questions. The first was would these people ever be able to go home? The irony of successfully bringing in humanitarian assistance in such a crisis is that it creates a dependency that is difficult to break.
My second question concerned the invisible IDP camps, the ones in less secure and difficult-to-reach areas. There are whole sections of Darfur that are simply too dangerous for humanitarian agencies to travel to. If it’s too dangerous for outside help, how can it be for the people who live there all the time?
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 20:14
UN-AMIS hybrid force
Wednesday, 15 June 2007
My dreams are filled with sand and rocks. The sand is everywhere. It is inescapable. You find it between your toes in the evening and dust storms carry it to your breakfast table. In this environment of arid heat, human beings, animals and other living things have somehow found a way to survive. I am just beginning to fathom the conditions of the Darfurians who have been displaced, and the struggles they face on so many fronts.
On Thursday morning, we traveled by military helicopter from Nyala back to El Fasher. Surprisingly, the helicopter and its pilot were Russian, and at the beginning of the flight he stood in the front of the cockpit and explained in a soft accent that the flight would last one hour and that we would be flying at 2,000 meters. The take-off was less tumultuous than I expected, although the vehicle and its passengers trembled uncomfortably throughout the flight.
As Peter and I were seated at the very back, we could pop open the one window in the helicopter that was not sealed shut. From this vantage, one could see hundreds of kilometers of expansive desert, winding river beds with no water, and a few unexpected rock structures that appeared as if they might have come from the American west. From 2,000 meters, I could see livestock, a lone truck making its way in the sand, brick factories and a few villages. I also saw a settlement that had been burned out as well as what might have been a rebel camp. It was an odd assortment of images, thrilling in their proximity and contrast.
The helicopter landed in El Fasher without incident and we stopped for a cool drink at a roadside shop just outside the airport and opposite the AIMIS headquarters. A gregarious officer came to the shop while we were drinking our sodas and confirmed that El Bashir, the president of Sudan, had sent a letter to Addis Ababa (where the African Union is headquartered) confirming his support for a UN-AU hybrid force.
The hybrid force is the “third phase” of a UN series of proposals to support the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, in part through an effective peacekeeping force. The Sudanese government has not allowed the UN to have peacekeepers in the country in the past (only support personnel to the AU forces). As AMIS troops tend to be unpopular among civilians, many feel that unless UN peacekeepers arrive, the entire situation will continue to degenerate.
Most colleagues here have a working assumption that this force will come. The word on the ground is that the new AMIS Force Commander who is due to arrive in one week is the perfect person to guide a hybrid force, with both a UN and AU background. The Darfur Peace Agreement may also be modified in order to enable more signatories. For sure unless the UN forces comes with a stronger mandate for protection – that is, that they can use force if necessary to intervene – they will ultimately be a disappointment to civilians and unable to stop any spiraling violence.
Before I left Nyala I had dinner with a local human rights colleague who said that there are three armed groups in El Fasher alone, not counting the various police and security forces. As with my first visit to El Fasher, I note the strong military and police presence. Earlier today I took off an hour to take outdoor pictures – strictly forbidden – and I was able to negotiate this only because the driver was adept at knowing which areas were occupied or closely patrolled.
I have three more days of interviews here in Fasher before returning to Khartoum.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 13:57
CIVPOL base in Nyala (South Darfur)
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
I’m beginning my third full day in Nyala. I spent all of yesterday at the AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) CIVPOL (civilian police) compound interviewing trainers and former trainees. I also observed portions of an in-mission training.
The peacekeepers I met in this sector have come from Nigeria, Burundi, Cameroon and Ghana. I’m following the thread of trainings that they have undergone as police officers – first in their home countries and then upon deployment to Sudan. In this process, I’ve also had another world opened up to me: the life of a peacekeeper in Darfur. There are almost uncontrollable politics about the AMIS and controversies surrounding how well they have tried to implement their mandate, the restrictions of the mandate itself, and crippling internal administrative issues. Humanitarian agencies, UNMIS (United Nations Mission in Sudan) and AMIS itself is doing finger-pointing around how well the peacekeepers are protecting civilians. The firewood patrols have been successful in the past, but the disappointment of Sudanese civilians has transformed into attacks on the peacekeepers themselves. So they are less safe and doing less and less protection. The civilian police that I spoke with were frustrated and perhaps a little scared. The trainings they have undergone are an oasis from these problems and the monotony of sitting in their quarters (tents) most of the day.
There is an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp set up just outside the CIVPOL base. As a foreigner you can easily recognize the camps because the temporary shelters – the tents – are white. Villages are brown, the color of mud and sticks. When we were flying from Genaia to Nyala you could see vast expanses of white tents outlying village after village. To me, they looked permanent. I am told that they are also continuing to expand. I drove past the camp near the base and received friendly waves from the children and women along the road. We are scheduled to visit an IDP camp in order to speak with camp leaders about the work of AMIS but we need to get security clearance for this.
Security for everyone is a big issue in Darfur, and it is closely intertwined with the politics of the Sudanese government. Darfur’s conflict situation means, on the one hand, that you aren’t necessarily granted a visa to enter the country (many human rights and humanitarian agents are now prohibited from entering Sudan). If you are able to enter the country you cannot leave the capitol. (For example, U.S. citizens are officially not allowed to travel more than 25 kilometers outside of Khartoum.)
I have the exceptional privilege of being able to travel because I am temporary UN staff. But even within the UN family, strict precautions are adhered to. Each sector of the country is ranked according to level of risk (all of the Darfur regions are rated at a level that would require UN personnel to be evacuated). Certain procedures you are expected to strictly adhere to, including curfews and radio check-ins every evening. Each UN person gets a radio phone for communication and the base checks in at 8 p.m. to make sure that all personnel are accounted for. Also, all internal travel must be approved. There are daily sitrep (situation representation) reports which provide information about incidents affecting security in each area. Thus from day to day, one may find that a trip you had planned to a village or sector must be cancelled.
It has been fascinating to work with a protection specialist. My initial expectation about working with Peter was that he would have good instincts about how to be cautious given his many years working in conflict areas. In fact – and understandably – when you are someone who has evacuated casualties and been through car attacks, gunfire and a hostage-situation in Gaza, you are much less likely to be bothered with minor inconveniences such as curfews. So I have been the one to urge Peter that we might NOT take a taxi at 9 p.m. in order to try to locate an Indian restaurant. Last night after I persuaded him that we should eat leftovers in the guesthouse we heard gunfire just outside on the street. This would be about the time we would have been returning by taxi. He has taken to calling me “mom” but I don’t mind.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 13:37
Nyala (South Darfur)
Sunday, 10 June 2007
It was physically quite tough to be in Fasher. There is the heat, the road conditions, and an ongoing question about one can find basic amenities, such as a fan, running water, an operating toilet, a place to buy water, and a restaurant with clean food. These questions compound an already challenging environment in which I am supposed to conduct interviews and collect other data. It is a bit exhausting and the work days are running long. So when I returned to my guest house on Saturday evening, I was disappointed that we didn’t have electricity. It was a night of limited ceiling fan and, the temperature inside the room meant that I spent the night in a sweaty sleep. These conditions are giving me an enormous appreciation for the UN and humanitarian colleagues that I am meeting in Darfur who are here by choice in order to try and make a difference. Apparently, the maximum that any ex-pat remains in Darfur is a year, and international organizations build in one or two weeks of R&R for their staff every six to eight weeks in order to get a break from the mental and physical stresses.
On Sunday morning we were up early again to travel to Nyala, which is the capitol of the state of South Darfur. Originally we were scheduled to travel by helicopter, but we were shifted to an 18-seater, and then languished on the tarmac for 45 minutes while authorities checked that the gasoline had not been tampered with. Eventually we arrived in Nyala via Geneia (West Darfur).
Nyala is not having the same degree of security concerns as El Fasher and it is more economically developed, so the entire atmosphere is a bit more relaxed. It is also greener, although we are still essentially in the middle of the desert. The other evaluator, Peter, and I dropped our bags at the UNICEF guest house and went to the UNDP office where we were introduced to every staff member. In Sudan, as in other parts of the region, welcoming guests is an elaborate tradition. As a visitor, it is important to shake hands in greeting with every staff person, from the driver to the country chief. It creates a very pleasant feeling!
I spent the afternoon huddled up in a conference room with UNDP staff conducting interviews. There were nine UN trainers associated with the training project, specializing in human rights and international humanitarian law; gender-based violence; and children’s rights/child protection. They were associated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UNICEF and UNFPA. Part of my job here is to understand how they designed and carried out their UN multi-agency training package with the African Union (AU) peacekeepers.
Here in Nyala, I will begin meeting AU forces in order to explore the impact of the trainings that they have been participating in. There are over 7,000 AU forces distributed over North, West and South Darfur. The peacekeepers come from a range of African countries and consist of civilian police, military observers and protection officers, each with roles specified by the AU mandate. The forces are organized according to eight sectors and, within these sectors, group sites. I am eager to hear about their training experiences.
I returned to the guest house at 8 p.m. – another typical working day on this mission! There are other internationals living in the guest house (guest houses are arranged as there are no hotels here), and everyone is artful in striking up conversations. I learned about the New Zealand woman newly arrived who will be working with the Sudanese government to improve the capacity of social workers; our Nepalese colleague proved a specialist in getting the TV to work. So many people want to do something helpful in Sudan, although with reluctance several have already admitted to me that they don’t feel that they are able to make much of a difference. Things just aren’t getting better.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 19:18
El Fasher
Saturday, 9 June 2007
I left the hotel at 6 a.m. to take the flight to El Fasher. There are nice-looking UN jets at the airport but it is the African Union planes that curry soldiers and civilians to Fasher each day. It was a peculiar feeling to be standing in line with soldiers and the procedures for checking in were completely different – like a stripped down version of airport service. You get clearance at an AMIS building in downtown Khartoum, which involves (literally) piling all of your luggage on top of one another on a single scale in order to check for the 25 pound limit. We waited for about 45 minutes until everyone had been cleared, then put our own luggage on the back of a truck where we were then shuttled to the airport. At the airport we had to change vans once again, and then we had to put our own luggage in the back cargo hold of the 28-person flight.
The flight took a little over an hour. By the time we were descending to land at the Fasher airport, the image of a vast expanse of Sudanese desert – artificially familiar to me through its presence in the media – was everywhere in sight. As we traveled closer, you could make out the huts of residents (like Mongolian yurts, but with thinner cloth) and lean-twos. It looked as if we might land in the sand but the runaway emerged at about the point that we touched down and the pilot hit the brakes- hard.
Getting our bags was the reverse of boarding the plane and the group of us traveling together helped with locating and lifting luggage out of cargo. The UNDP van was waiting for us. This vehicle is less than a year old, and it is in pristine condition. Apparently, traveling by vehicle has become so dangerous in Sudan (67 UN vehicles have been hijacked in 2007 so far) that most staff travel by plane.
El Fasher is a world unto itself. I have been to many exotic places – Pakistan, Mongolia – but I have never entered a world where everything around me was utterly different. The first thing I noticed when I disembarked was that it was cooler in Fasher than in Khartoum. It was only 33 degrees, since rain had arrived the day before. And the breeze was cool and refreshing, as opposed to harsh and punishing in Khartoum.
El Fasher is an ancient city and the residents include not only people, but goats, camels and horses. The structures are a mixture of cement, brick and plant materials. Men and women are wearing indigenous clothing- there is simply no Western clothing to be seen, excepting for the occasional aid worker. Between the airport and downtown Fasher – a drive of about 10 minutes – there is one main road. On this road one can see signs of humanitarian and aid organizations still operating here. There were 180 organizations working in Darfur last year, and nearly 15,000 aid workers were registered. This number has decreased somewhat as some organizations have begun to pull out, but they are still pretty high. For large camps, one key humanitarian organization is responsible for service delivery.
There is a curfew in Darfur – there has been since 1992. All residents are advised to be indoors as of 8:30. Shootings do occur regularly, and have intensified recently, we were told. There is also a strong Sudanese military presence. Open trucks with soldiers and rifles regularly patrol for no apparent reason. Some of the trucks are equipped with sub-machine guns. Apparently the uniforms of armed personnel can vary, making it sometimes difficult to know if someone in uniform is the police or military. I passed a female officer of some kind when I was grabbing my lunch in the market. She was definitely unfriendly.
Although officially no picture taking is allowed, I was told that it should be okay as long as you don’t photograph a sensitive area and have the courtesy to ask others if taking a picture is all right.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 02:32
Khartoum
Thursday, 7 June 2007
We’ve just finished our second day here in Khartoum. Our time has been spent in briefings and initial interviews, and dealing with a mind boggling host of administrative issues. I needed to pass basic and advanced security tests in order to receive permission to travel to Darfur. The courses are actually quite interesting, dealing with a host of potential threats that one can come across and how one should try to reduce risks and respond to situations where threats have become a reality. The cases are not comforting and, of course, the security situation has deteriorated such that many of the scenarios are happening quite regularly. Therefore, I was glad to take the courses and I learned very interesting techniques, such as how to orient your north/south position using the sun.
Khartoum is a sprawling city, the colors of concrete and reddish sand. One can imagine that one would be standing in the middle of a desert, if one stripped away the structures. It is summer, and it is hot: around 113 F/45 C during the day. There are only rare breezes and when these arrive, they are often warmer than the still air. The soil bakes so that it goes down only to the 90s/30s in the evening. Thank goodness it is a dry heat, although I am sure that one can dehydrate quickly without being aware of this.
In the course of the past three days I have visited three UN offices: UNDP, UNFPA and UNMIS. The staff I have met so far are extremely hardworking and I admire them tremendously. They are multi-cultural and there is a high presence of Africans (both East and West Africa) and Asians (Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshi). As I walk through a building, I hear not only English, but also French and Arabic.
The political atmosphere at the UN includes public discussions on the use of a hybrid United Nations-African Union force to bring protection to Darfur civilians and enable humanitarian aid. At the end of May, such a proposal was made by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and today the news is that the UN and the AU leadership are close to reaching an agreement about how the proposed 23,000 peacekeepers would be constituted and managed. The Sudanese government refuses to consider an operation controlled solely by the United Nations, so a revised plan would increase the chances that such a force would be accepted. At this time, there are approximately 7,000 AU peacekeepers deployed in Sudan but they are widely viewed as ineffective.
Friday and Saturday are the weekend in Sudan, but we will be quite busy. Tomorrow there will be more meetings and on Saturday we travel to El Fasher, the main city in North Darfur. Darfur is constituted by three states and we will visit two of them – in the North and in the South. West Darfur has a more precarious security situation, so we will check the security reports before planning a trip.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 22:54
Geneva
Monday, 4 June 2007
Today I, along with my colleague Peter, were briefed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the office's role in the project that we will be evaluating. It was our first chance to move from a review of documents to a live conversation. Peter is a “protection specialist”, having worked for the International Red Cross for 14 years. He has extended experience working in conflict situations and our skills are considered complementary to each other – with mine focused more on training and evaluation. The situation is extremely complex in Darfur - no suprises there. The layers of complexity include the civilian protection needs and security issues, and a range of local protection actors, including African Union forces in Sudan (AMIS), UN agencies active in the country (UNMIS), a host of humanitarian agencies and ostensibly the local Sudanese police. Tomorrow we travel to Khartoum.
Posted by Felisa Tibbitts at 23:14
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