Having spent some 10 years reporting here on the government of Sudan’s terrorism against black Christians and animists in the south of the country-and then on black Muslims in its Darfur region-I find my reaction to the purported peace treaty between the genocidal Khartoum government and the Darfur rebels signed on May 5 in Nigeria is the same as that of Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who presided over the peace talks: ‘Unless the right spirit, unless the right attitude and right disposition is there, this document is not worth the paper it is signed on.’ Ismael Haron, who operates a market stall at Gaga refugee camp in Chad-where Darfur survivors are also in mortal danger from the Janjaweed-concurs: ‘We know Sudan president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. We have seen him make agreements and then break them 10 minutes later.’ At the core of the peace pact is al-Bashir’s agreement to disarm the janjaweed-his militia, which is responsible for very many of the 400,000 dead and 2.4 million made homeless during the last three years. These death squads, who rape the women they do not kill, are supposedly to be demobilized by mid October. And if they continue their […]