WORLD / Africa
'Climate change root of Darfur strife'
(AP)
Updated: 2007-06-17 10:16
WASHINGTON -- Climate change is partly to blame for the conflict in
Sudan's Darfur region, where droughts have provoked fighting over water
sources, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a newspaper editorial.
"Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and
political shorthand -- an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against
black rebels and farmers," Ban wrote in an editorial that appeared
Saturday in The Washington Post. "Look to its roots, though, and you
discover a more complex dynamic."
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Rainfall in Sudan began declining two decades ago, a phenomenon due "to
some degree, from man-made global warming," said Ban, who has made both
Darfur and climate change priorities.
Settled farmers and Arab nomadic herders had gotten along until the
drought, he wrote, but as conditions worsened, water and food shortages
disrupted the peace and "evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness
today."
Ban said similar ecological problems are behind conflicts in other
countries, including Somalia and Ivory Coast.
The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when local rebels took up arms against
the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese
leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the
janjaweed, to fight them - a charge they deny.
After months of U.N. and Western pressure, Sudan agreed in the past week
to allow a joint U.N.-African Union force of up to 19,000 peacekeepers to
replace the 7,000-member AU mission now in Darfur.
Ban called the agreement "significant progress" after "four years of
diplomatic inertia." But he warned that a long-term solution was needed
for "the essential dilemma" -- the scarcity of good land.
"Any peace in Darfur must be built on solutions that go to the root
causes of the conflict," he said.
The U.N. chief called for sustained economic development, possibly
involving new irrigation and water storage techniques and efforts to
improve health, education and roads.
"The international community needs to help organize these efforts,
teaming with the Sudanese government as well as the international aid
agencies and nongovernmental organizations working so heroically on the
ground," Ban said.
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