Outgoing U.N. peace official says war is over in Darfur

CAIRO, Egypt - The outgoing U.N. peacekeeping chief in Sudan's Darfur region said the world should no longer consider the long-running conflict a war after a sharp decline in violence and deaths over the last year.

Activists and Darfur residents disagree, and the comments by Rodolphe Adada heightened anxiety that there will be less international focus on resolving the root problems in the troubled region.

U.N. peacekeepers have recorded a sharp decline in fatalities from violence. There were 16 deaths in June, compared with an average 130 deaths per month last year.

"We can no longer talk of a big conflict, of a war in Darfur," Adada said this week before stepping down as head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, or UNAMID.

"I think now everybody understands it," he said. "We can no longer speak of this issue. It is over."

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in Khartoum, claiming discrimination and neglect.

U.N. officials say the war has claimed at least 300,000 lives from violence, disease, and displacement. They say that about 2.7 million people were driven from their homes and at its height, in 2003-05, it was called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

President Obama's new envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, caused an outcry in June when he said the violence in Darfur no longer amounted to genocide and then suggested easing sanctions against the Sudanese government.

Adding to the complications, violence is rising on another front in semiautonomous southern Sudan, more than four years after a 2005 peace accord ended a separate 21-year civil war that left two million people dead. If violence there escalates, it could potentially overshadow Darfur.

Adada said the decline in violence in Darfur was an opportune time to push forward a peace process that so far has had no success.

During a visit to Darfur in July, Gration appealed to refugees in one of the largest camps to return to their villages. He also suggested easing sanctions against Sudan, telling a Senate hearing that month there was no longer any evidence to support the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

His comments were welcomed in Sudan, which has always maintained the death toll in Darfur was greatly exaggerated and said it was fighting a counterinsurgency, not a war.

But they angered activists and Darfur residents, who fear the United States is easing its pressure on Sudan's government.

"The perception . . . that if it is not getting worse . . . it [must be] getting better is something that takes the wind out of the sails of international action," said John Prendergast, one of former President Bill Clinton's pointmen on Sudan.

Prendergast says the new phase of violence in Darfur is a "breaking spirits" campaign, which seeks to demoralize the refugees.

The Darfur rebels have also dismissed Adada's declaration, saying government forces were still operating in the region and violence against civilians continues in the camps.

"There are no more people on their land to kill," said Abdelwahid Elnur, exiled leader of one of the oldest rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army, whose fighters are largely stationed in a central mountain hideout.