Sudan’s Deputy Chief of Staff: Joint security force for Darfur ‘a first step’

The procedures for implementing the security arrangements for the Darfur movements were launched yesterday at the former headquarters of the UNAMID mission in the North Darfur capital El Fasher. Sudan’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Lt Gen Khaled El Shami, confirmed that the implementation began yesterday, with procedures for absorbing the forces of the rebel movements into a joint security force with special tasks in Darfur.

The governor of North Darfur, Nimir Abdelrahman, said that the start of the implementation of the security arrangements procedures for the joint force with special tasks in Darfur is a first step to complete the implementation of the security arrangements clause in the region.

The recruitment official, Brig Gen Kamal Omar, explained that the integration procedures begin with the initial examination of the combatants’ records, followed by the medical examination, and then the chips and the civil registry.

Brig Gen Hafez Mohamed, commander of the medical arm, said that yesterday medical procedures included more than 110 combatants of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in terms of physical fitness and laboratory examination, and said that all of them passed those tests.

In Khartoum, former rebel leader and member of the Sovereignty Council, El Hadi Idris, announced that the government at the national and state levels has taken some measures and will stop the violence in Darfur.

Idris said during a meeting with the British Ambassador to Khartoum, Giles Lever, at the Republican Palace yesterday that among the measures taken was the formation of the joint force to protect civilians in Darfur and said that this force would contribute to limiting such incidents in the future.

The British ambassador announced his country’s support for the UN initiative for a solution Sudan He stressed that Britain will work with its partners at the regional and international levels, to help the Sudanese to reach a political consensus conducive to forming a government and preparing the environment for elections and a democratic transition.

On Monday, the five states of Darfur, at the headquarters of the UNAMID mission in El Fasher, received their shares of the assets and equipment left by the mission for civilian purposes after completing its tasks in Darfur in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution.

The governor of North Darfur, Nimir Abdelrahman, said the assets handed over Monday to the states committee are four-wheel drive vehicles, large lorries, generators, and other tools for civilian use.

The representative of the Darfur States Delivery Committee representing Central Darfur, Seifeldin Ismail, said that the states received the remainder of their assets from UNAMID yesterday, and they will be transferred from El Fasher to the states in the coming hours.

He added that the delivery of this equipment and machinery will represent an opportunity to improve the living standards of people in the region. The Deputy Governor of Darfur, Mohamed Eisa, and a number of military and executive leaders in the state participated in the ceremony.

Looting

As previously reported by Radio Dabanga, the ongoing insecurity in Darfur, often partly exacerbated by the vacuum created by the UNAMID drawdown, has meant that the practicalities of the handover of UNAMID sites and facilities have not always gone as planned.

Warehouses of the World Food Programme (WFP) on December 29, and the former United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) logistical base north of the capital, was plundered on December 24-25.

On June 5, two people were killed and eight others sustained injuries when a former UNAMID site in Shangil Tobaya, Dar El Salaam locality, south of El Fasher in North Darfur was looted.

The site was handed over to the Government of Sudan on May 25. It was the last of 14 deep field sites handed over to the Sudanese government. At the time, the North Darfur government and the Sudanese government’s joint task force strongly reconfirmed their commitment to ensure civilian use of the former site.

Since the mission ended its mandate at the end of last year, various former UNAMID sites handed over to local authorities to be used as schools or training centres, have been looted. In February, a site in North Darfur’s Saraf Omra that was earmarked for use as a vocational training centre was looted and ‘levelled’ just weeks after it was handed over to the Sudanese government.