U.S. and European media

September 4, 2023

Reuters:  Darfur activist held in Sudan. Human rights activists on Thursday accused Sudan's security service of arresting a Darfuri campaigner in Khartoum and holding him without charge for a week.  Abdelmageed Salih was arrested with a friend in the capital's prosperous Khartoum 2 district on Friday, members of the Darfur Democratic Forum, and other activists, told Reuters.

Associated Press: UN peacekeeping chief in Darfur says war over after violence drops sharply, activists disagree. 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 past 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 to an average 130 deaths per month last year.

The Economist: The generals have got it right. FESTERING conflicts in faraway places tend to follow a familiar trajectory. At first there is worldwide moral outrage; next, earnest promises that "something must be done"; then, when rapid solutions fail to work, bafflement and finally a sense of hapless resignation. That sequence is common in Africa: think of Somalia and Congo. Now there is a danger that the benighted region of Darfur, in western Sudan, may join the list of seemingly insoluble problems.

The Economist: Neither all-out war nor a proper peace. WHEN General Martin Agwai, the outgoing commander of the United Nations and African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, said that the war in Sudan's western region had all but dried up, he stirred controversy. Some people are loth to acknowledge that the nature and scale of the violence in Darfur have changed. All the same, violence still rages-and the UN must share the blame for failing to do more to stop it.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].