Darfur War is Over, U.N. Commander Says The war in Darfur, Sudan, which has lasted six years and has killed 300,000 people according to United Nation estimates, is over, according to a U.N. military commander. The fierce fighting that took place in the region earlier this decade has been replaced by smaller disputes due to the split of key rebel groups, Gen. Martin Agwai said, reports the BBC. “Banditry, localized issues, people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that,” he said.  Agwai, who is due to leave his post this week, also said the region’s main problem now is political. But critics are throwing some shade on the general’s declaration. “There has been a large decline in fighting in Darfur,” Sudan analyst Gill Lusk told the BBC. “But it is the government that turns the tap on and off – they can restart the violence whenever they want.” Even though fighting has decreased, with 26 different rebel groups, it’s hard to get them to reach a peace deal with the government, said Scott Gration, the United State’s envoy to Sudan. In 2003, ethnic rebel groups attacked government forces, accusing the government of mistreating the nation’s Black Africans. Many have called the widespread violence by pro-government forces that followed genocide. The government denies being behind the attacks on its citizens, but President Omar al-Bashir is currently facing war crimes charges from an international court, the BBC reports.

Opposition Continues to Protest in Antigua The opposition Antigua Labor Party (ALP) is continued its protest against the government’s current administration with a large rally on Thursday. The group was protesting the nation’s increasing unemployment, the high fuel prices and the Antiguan government’s decision to reach out to the International Monetary Fund for help, the BBC reports. But the ruling party has said ALP is just attempting to promote “a campaign of intimidation.” The group will keep protesting until their demands are listened to, the ALP said.

Charities Allowed Back in Sudan
After kicking them out of the nation earlier this year, the Sudanese government will allow four charities to return to the nation’s Darfur region, according to a U.N. official. Care International, Save the Children, Mercy Corps and Padco are the only four groups permitted to return out of the 13 that were booted in March, reports the BBC. John Holmes, the U.N.’s humanitarian head, said that Sudan would allow the international charities to return on the condition that they register under different names and logos, reports the BBC. “That possibility is there for all the organizations which were expelled and some of them already have taken advantage of it,” he told the BBC. “They now got very recently new registrations and will be restarting their operations.”  Since 2003, fighting in the Darfur region has left 300,000 dead and two million people displaced. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, announced he was expelling the charities after an international court indicted him on war crimes. But recently, according to Holmes, there has been “good progress” in the relationship between the government and the U.N.

Kofi Annan Tells African Presidents to Do Better

Former United Nations leader Kofi Annan told African leaders to get it together at the launch of a report on the African economy, reports the BBC. While those who promise aid to the continent need to follow through, African leaders determine the fate of their respective countries, the former U.N. secretary-general said.  “We need a new development model that provides security, stability, and addresses people’s needs. Everyone needs to contribute,” Annan said at the launch. “Business has a key role, as do Africa’s trading and donor partners. But the primary responsibility to make it happen rests with Africa’s political leaders. According to the Africa Progress report, corruption costs African $150 billion each year. The report was put together by 11 current or former world leaders including the UK’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel.

Fight Anti-foreigner Violence, Group Tells Zuma
A year after a surge in attacks on immigrants in the country, a group is asking new President Jacob Zuma to do more to confront xenophobia, reports the BBC. The organization, the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants, says that the attacks have not ceased and called on authorities to investigate the problem. “Little has been done by authorities to address the root causes of the violence and as a result, threats of violence against foreigners remain common in some communities,” a statement from the group read. Last year, more than 60 immigrants (mostly from neighboring Zimbabwe and Mozambique) were killed and thousands were displaced when they were attacked by mobs, many of whom blamed them for the nation’s lack of jobs and crime problem. Twenty-one native South Africans, thought to be foreigners, were also mistakenly killed, reports the BBC. Officials in the country, however, said there have been few attacks since then and that they had done all they could to prevent them from occurring in the future.
 

Peacekeeper Murdered in Darfur Attack
An African Union-United Nations Mission peacekeeper was shot and killed in Darfur late last week while being carjacked, reports CNN. The man, who served as a military observer, was shot by gunmen as he was opening the gate to his Darfur home and died soon after going to receive medical attention. Officials from the group are condemning the attack on one of their members, calling it “deplorable.” The mission is “here to assist the people of Darfur, and any attack on them is totally unacceptable …I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family of the peacekeeper who lost his life” Rodolphe Adada, a special representative, said in a statement. The group, along with Sudan’s government, is investigating the murder. The peacekeeper is the 15th killed since the mission was deployed in the nation last year, reports CNN.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), no stranger to passive resistance, was arrested Monday as part of a protest against the Sudanese government’s humanitarian policies in that nation’s Darfur region. Arrested along with Lewis during a rally staged by the Save Darfur Coalition were Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.). They were taken into custody after crossing a police line and refusing to leave the area in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington. Read the rest.

Kidnapped Sudanese Charity Workers Freed
After being kidnapped by gunmen in Darfur last Wednesday, three foreign charity workers were released this weekend, reports the BBC. The workers, part of the charity Doctors Without Borders, included an administrator from France, a nurse from Canada and a doctor from Italy. After they were taken at gunpoint last week from the group’s office, the captors reportedly had asked for a ransom. But both Sudanese and Italian officials insist that there was not any ransom paid. According to Osman Yusuf Kibir, governor of North Darfur, the kidnappers were part of a group called the Eagles of Bashir, and carried out the kidnapping to protest an international court’s move to issue an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir for his alleged war crimes. “They released them for the country’s sake, and they kidnapped them for the sake of the country,” Kibir told the news service. Soon after the kidnapping, the charity had pulled out of the area due to security concerns, and, according to a high-ranking official, they are still not sure whether they’ll be able to continue their projects in Darfur due to security concerns.

Rabies Outbreak Kills More Than 80 Angolan Kid
An outbreak of rabies in the African nation of Angola has killed at least 83 children in three months, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Some say the number could be much higher.  “The children were brought to our hospital and are the only ones we know of, so the number could be higher,” Dr. David Bernardino, who works at Hospital Pediatrico, told CNN. Some children were brought in too late to be saved by doctors, and some could not be saved because the hospital had run out of vaccines to treat the illness. “It is a sad moment for us. I think it was probably that no one was prepared for such a high case load,” he said. Stray dogs in the slums of the country’s capital, Luanda, could be behind the tragic epidemic.  “We have had some sporadic cases in other provincial capitals in the country; we think the virus was brought into Luanda and then spread through the dogs – Angolans love dogs,” the doctor told CNN. Recently, though, the nation has seen a drop in cases; perhaps due to the fact that the infected pack of dogs have died, according to one expert. More than 95 percent of rabies deaths are in Asia or Africa, according to stats from WHO. The illness, transmitted through saliva, can be treated after exposure, but the disease is deadly once symptoms start showing. Francois Meslin, a rabies expert from WHO, told CNN that costs might prevent some poor families from getting treatment. “One dose of vaccine costs about $10 and five of those have to be administered, which makes the total cost of treatment $50, which is more than a month’s salary for families in most developing countries,” he said. 

Charity Workers Kidnapped in Sudan
Kidnappers abducted three charity workers at gunpoint in Sudan’s Darfur region Wednesday, reports the BBC. And, officials say, they are asking for ransom. The workers are all from the group Doctors Without Borders and include a nurse from Canada, a doctor from Italy and a coordinator from France.  Darfur governor, Osman Kebir, is optimistic about their safe release. “Negotiations with the abductors are progressing well and could result in the release of the victims soon,” Sudanese media quoted him as saying. “The kidnappers demanded a financial ransom and have promised that they are not interested in violence,” he continued. But as a result of the kidnapping, the charity is removing almost all of its teams from the region. Doctors Without Borders “is extremely worried both for our abducted colleagues and for the populations that [we] had been providing medical aid to,” the group said in a statement.

Martinique to end strike soon.
Unions and employers in the French Caribbean island of Martinique are due to sign an agreement that will end a monthlong strike, reports the BBC. Similar to the recently ended strikes in nearby Guadeloupe, the two sides were in conflict over workers’ salaries. Details of pay increases are still being hammered out, but the deal is set to be signed Saturday. The strike temporarily shut down many of the island’s businesses, but many were back to normal once union leaders announced a deal between them and employers was in the works.

World Lens: Protests flare up in Guadeloupe, and the Caribbean celebrates carnival. See pics.

New Rioting Breaks Out in Martinique
Violent demonstrations continue on the French Caribbean island of Martinique for the second night in a row, reports Agence France Presse. On both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, protesters have rammed stolen cars into stores, set trash cans ablaze and used some of the cans to block streets in the capital city Fort-de-France.  Tuesday night’s riots saw several cars set on fire and about 20 stores looted by protesters. Police used tear gas on the protesters in the capital. For weeks, demonstrators in the island and neighboring French Caribbean island Guadeloupe have been on strike demanding higher pay to deal with the increasing cost of living.

Fighting Forces 15,000 Out of Southern Darfur
The United Nations says that violence in southern Darfur has forced 15,000 people to flee to a refugee camp in the northern part of the region, reports CNN. The fighting was between government soldiers and rebel forces from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The large influx of people to the northern camp, Zam Zam, is placing a huge burden on the camp’s water supply, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Over the past six years, 300,000 people have been killed due to violence in the Darfur region, and 2.7 million have been displaced, according to U.N. statistics. The African Union and the U.N. (UNAIMID) will team up to build a community police center near the Zam Zam camp in two weeks, the U.N. announced.

World Lens:

Haiti’s devastated by the collapse of a school; a South African legend passes; and Beyoncé hits the stage of the World Music Awards. See pics.

Another school falls down in Haiti. Days after a school collapsed in the nation, killing more than 90 people, another school, this time in Haiti’s capital, collapsed Wednesday, reports CNN. The minor collapse affected only a portion of the building and injured nine children. The students are from the Grace Divine and Secondary School in Port-au-Prince, and lives were lost in the collapse, according to Haiti’s head of operations for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Children who were jumping and dancing during a musical caused the collapse, she said. But this building, like the school building that collapsed last week, suffered from faulty construction, says a local journalist. “This is the same kind of problem of construction as in the school last week. It’s weak construction. It’s not solid,” said Clarens Renois. The scale of damage in this latest collapse doesn’t come close to Friday’s tragedy. Haitian President Rene Preval has called for an investigation into last week’s collapse that killed 93 people and injured 150.

Sudan’s government announces ceasefire in Darfur. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has announced a ceasefire in the Darfur region, the BBC reports. “I hereby announce our immediate unconditional ceasefire between the armed forces and the warring factions, provided that an effective monitoring mechanism is put into action and observed by all involved parties,” he said. He made the announcement after he got the final recommendations of the Sudan People’s Initiative (SPI). But members of a prominent rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said they wouldn’t agree to the ceasefire, Reuters reported. A Sudanese official, Jalal al-Dugair, said the government will create contracts with the rebel groups to encourage them to abide by the ceasefire agreement. Bashir has been criticized worldwide for not doing enough to stop violence against Black Africans in the region, and he’s even wanted by an international court for allegedly facilitating war crimes in the nation. The government hopes that the call for ceasefire will take some of the pressure off of him and show the court, as well as the world, that he is doing something to stop war crimes, reports the news service.  However, declared ceasefires, in the past, have not gone according to plan. Although, this agreement, according to a government official, addresses all rebel concerns and will be aided by the United Nations. About 300,000 people have died since the violence, between ethnic rebels and militias suspected to be linked to the government, started in 2003. Another 2.5 million people have been made homeless.

U.S. is ready to airlift peacekeepers to Darfur

. The U.S. is ready to airlift as many as 4,000 peacekeepers, including Ethiopians and Egyptians who make up the U.N.-African Union mission to Darfur, the U.S. envoy for Africa said Monday.  The mission started deploying in Darfur in January but remains at less than half of the 26,000 authorized to go there. The mission has also complained of Sudanese government stonewalling and transport problems. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who arrived in Khartoum from a trip to Congo Monday, said the Sudanese government has made “important progress” recently in speeding up the deployment of the peacekeepers, The Associated Press reports. “There has been important progress,” Frazer said. “But we are looking to get at least 3,000 to 4,000 (peacekeepers) in Darfur. We certainly have offered the U.N. to help do airlift if they need to bring in both troops and to move equipment.” Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor said the United States’ offer to help ferry more troops and equipment into Darfur was first made in September, during Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha’s visit to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly. After Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was accused of genocide in Darfur in July, Sudanese authorities eased some procedures including issuing visas for promised troops. The move was an apparent response to Western demands for cooperation with the international community. Al-Bashir has dismissed the charges brought against him by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. He says his country won’t recognize the tribunal, but his government is also lobbying supporters and others to freeze the international prosecution.

A human rights group wants Nigeria to stop executing people immediately, because hundreds on death row might actually be innocent, reports the BBC. According to a report by Amnesty International, many of Nigerian prisoners on death row did not have a fair trial; in addition, many confessions came after officials tortured the suspects, and they were able to use that confession alone to sentence people to death, which is against the law. “The judicial system is riddled with flaws that can have devastating consequences,” Aster va Kregten, a spokesman for the rights group said. “It is truly horrifying to think of how many innocent people may have been executed and may still be executed,” he said in a statement. A staggering 80 percent of prisoners say they’ve been beaten, threatened or tortured while they have been in police custody, says the report. Nigeria’s State prosecutor, Williams Ashu, says the report brought important issues to light. “We’re working on trying to resolve the problem,” he told the BBC. He also suggested the nation’s prison workers are not as well trained as they can be. “The work they are doing is very hard work that some of them are not adequately trained for it,” Ashu said. Many prisoners also said that when the police arrested them, they asked for money to let them go, says the report.

Could there be another Darfur war in Sudan? Disputes in another region of Sudan could grow into another war as big as the one in Darfur, a group warns. “South Kordofan is a Sudan in miniature, with heavily armed African and Arab tribes living side by side,” a spokesman from the International Crisis Group told the BBC. The international community, as well as the country’s political parties, need to intervene in the crisis before elections next year. Southern Kordofan borders Darfur and was contested during the north-south war. While the Sudanese government and rebels signed a peace agreement saying they will share power and oil profits, leaders of the two factions (President Omar al-Bashir’s NCP and an ex-rebel) have been “dangerously engaged in ethnic polarization” ahead of next year’s elections, says the report. “There is frustration everywhere; there is frustration among the Arabs; there is frustration among the Nuba tribes; and with all this frustration, there is no adequate responses to it – they can all converge and [be] expressed through violence,” a spokesman told the BBC. If they want to calm the situation in the region, they still have time if they act now, says the group. The conflict in the western Sudan region of Darfur, where government-backed militias known as Janjaweed killed hundreds of thousands of people and made millions homeless, started more than five years ago.

World Lens: Colin Powell comes out for Africa, Dominican model hits the runway, Obama fever heats up the Caribbean. See pics.