The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, arrived in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region on Tuesday morning to witness the devastating results of Arab militia attacks on the indigenous black African population.
Straw flew into El Fasher, in northern Darfur, and met refugees as they queued for water in the Abu Shouk refugee camp.
The camp is a temporary home for about 57 000 people forced to flee their villages as marauding Janjaweed fighters shot and raped villagers, stole their livestock and burned their homes to the ground.
Straw was also scheduled to meet aid workers who are struggling to combat malnutrition and prevent disease in the camp.
Speaking to Sky News after he arrived, Straw said he intended to listen to refugees’ stories and to consider how they could return home in safety.
He said the camp appeared to be very well run but he was aware that, as a foreign dignitary, he was often shown the best conditions rather than the worst.
Speaking to journalists on the flight to El Fasher, Straw said that he was pleased at indications that the Sudanese government was easing access to Darfur for nongovernmental organisations.
The foreign secretary arrived in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Monday at the start of a two-day visit in which he intends to assess whether the government is meeting the United Nations’s demand that it halt the Janjaweed attacks and protect villagers.
It is generally accepted that the Arab militias operate with the backing of the government, though Khartoum has denied the claim.
Two rebel groups in the region — the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army — have fought the Janjaweed.
The UN estimates that more than one million people in Darfur have fled their homes. Many of them have been forced into camps within the region or in neighbouring Chad.
A United Nations Security Council resolution gave the government until August 30 to bring the situation under control.
Straw told Sky News the government in Khartoum had sought to stem the violence but that it was for the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to judge the extent to which it had complied with the resolution.
Straw said he intended to speak to Annan and other African leaders after he had completed his trip.
He also said there were practical limits to what the international community could do to help the people of Darfur without the consent of the Sudanese government.
At talks on Monday night with Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, Straw extracted an undertaking that visas would be granted for the first time to the British branch of Amnesty International and the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch.
Straw added that there appeared to be some evidence of improving security within the refugee camps and the priority now was to improve security outside them.
One British official who has been working in western Darfur told journalists the region remained largely ”bandit country” in which the Janjaweed were ”doing what they want, where they want, when they want to the non-Arabs”.
Having driven the farmers from their villages into makeshift refugee camps, the Janjaweed were keeping them there by continuing the beatings and sexual attacks, he said. This ensured that the militia was free to do as it wished in the rest of the country.
Although the Sudanese army remained in its garrisons, the Khartoum government had deployed police from outside Darfur into the region, the official added. It remained to be seen, however, whether those police had been given orders to crack down on the violence.
The official said he was anxious to find out more about UN plans to create security areas for 20km around the camps. He did not expect the refugees to have the confidence to return to their villages until next spring.
Some refugees said they had attempted to return to their villages after the government said it was safe to do so.
One man, Abdel Moula Abdullahi, said he returned home when the government gave the all clear after a Janjaweed attack, but fighters returned on August 9 with Sudanese military backing.
Another refugee said the Arab militias wanted their land ”because the land of Darfur is rich, and there are many animals, plenty of riches, oil under the ground”.
Abdullahi concluded: ”The government of Sudan doesn’t want blacks, they want only Arabs. Before the first attack, some Arabs in the region came to tell us: ‘We’re going to send you blacks away and claim this land for ourselves.”’
Peace talks in Nigeria between the Sudanese government and the two rebel groups challenging the country’s Islamist regime appeared deadlocked on Monday.
Sudan’s negotiator, Mazjoub al-Khalifa, rejected the offer of African Union troops to disarm the rebels, saying his government would ”disarm the rebel movements, the Janjaweed and other militia”.
Abubakar Hamid Nour, of the Justice and Equality Movement, told Reuters that was unacceptable. ”There is no way we can let our enemies disarm us. They are still killing us and bombing us,” he said.
The United Kingdom has provided £2-million to support a limited African Union peace mission to Darfur and has pledged a further £750 000 for commercial charter planes to transport Nigerian troops to Darfur.
The first Nigerian troops are expected to arrive, joining a contingent of Rwandan troops, later this week. – Guardian Unlimited Â