Hopes rise for sanctions as Security Council votes on Darfur

The United Nations Security Council will vote today on a resolution threatening sanctions against Sudan, which has so far failed to curb the slaughter by rampaging militias in Darfur.

The United Nations Security Council will vote today on a resolution threatening sanctions against Sudan, which has so far failed to curb the slaughter by rampaging militias in Darfur.

Western diplomats appeared optimistic last night that the resolution, which also calls for a formal investigation into claims that the government-backed Janjaweed is carrying out genocide in the region, would be carried in today's vote. It seems likely that at least two countries, China and Pakistan, will abstain, however.

Efforts by the United States and Britain to push through the resolution were stalled last week by opposition from both countries, as well as by Algeria and Russia, which voiced strong reservations about its underlying message that the Khartoum government bears responsibility for the suffering.

China, which is traditionally wary of any UN resolutions that include sanction provisions, had been threatening to veto the text. A strongly worded appeal for the vote may make it impossible for Beijing to take such a step, however.

Mr Annan, who made his unusual intervention on Thursday, is meanwhile adding to the pressure by personally dispatching the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, as well as his special envoy on genocide, Juan Mendes, to Khartoum this weekend. They will arrive in the capital on Sunday and remain in the country for seven days.

The resolution includes provisions for creating a commission to investigate whether the ethnic violence in Darfur has in fact reached the point of out-and-out genocide, as was suggested by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, last week.

The draft was still undergoing some last-minute tweaking last night. But it was expected to say that the council "shall consider" imposing sanctions, including on the oil industry, if something is not done. It will also demand that the government co-operate fully with the African Union, which may send 3,000 troops as well as observers to investigate abuses.

"It is urgent to act now," Mr Annan told reporters at UN headquarters. "Civilians are still being attacked." He said it was "inconceivable" the council would not respond.

Not that a vote in faraway New York will bring much immediate consolation to the victims. The people in Darfur are in no doubt that someone wants them to be annihilated. Entire hamlets have disappeared - houses made of straw leave no trace when they burn - and their people scattered, to refugee camps, caves and forests, anywhere they feel they are safe. Children's clothes, water pots, copies of the Koran, all lie amid the ruins of villages, abandoned. Every family has a child, parent, uncle or niece who was killed by shrapnel and gunfire. In total, over 50,000 people have died in this conflict.

Survivors talk of how they often heard an attack before they saw it. "For months, they would come to attack villages nearby," said Amena. "We would hear the aeroplanes and run to the trees, sometimes the mountains. When I finally heard the aeroplanes coming closer and closer to me, I thought I would know what to do but I was still frightened. I took my children and ran, but my husband was lost. I still don't know where he is."

Westerners who walk through Darfur's abandoned villages wonder why anyone would even bother fighting over these rough mud huts, the patches of grass and the muddy rivers. Life in this vast, empty landscape was timeless, and basic - women cooked on open fires while the men took goats, camels and donkeys to drink at nearby rivers. But the simplicity of this lifestyle did not stop the Janjaweed from sweeping down on them and throwing hand grenades into their wattle-and-daub huts while government-owned Antonovs dropped bombs on their villages, which have never had any electricity or running water: 21st century technology has been used to destroy a people who still live in the Middle Ages.

After these attacks, the Janjaweed often round up the livestock they have stolen and move to the prime grazing areas. The victims, some 1.2 million of them, sit in camps around Darfur and neighbouring Chad, wondering when they can move back home.

The government claims the violence is little more than an ancient rivalry between Arab and African tribes which both want access to the best grazing grounds. But the civilians in Darfur, most of them African, talk about how they hear government aeroplanes circling overhead minutes before they see the Janjaweed coming over the horizon. And when they try to flee, they are shot by men in Sudanese army uniforms firing government weapons.

Many of the villagers feel abandoned by the international community. Ali Hamed, 91, does not understand why no-one stopped the Janjaweed from driving him from the village he had not left for 80 years. "I supported all people who have ruled Sudan since the English left, but this regime is full of criminals," he said. "I hear there is a big government that can attack Omar Bashir [the President]. Can you ask them to come and help me?''