Peter Takirambudde executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division said: Musa Hilal squarely contradicts

Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division said: “Musa Hilal squarely contradicts the government’s claims that it has ‘no relationship’ with local militias.”The US said last year that it believed the violence in Darfur constituted genocide, and it wants to set up an international war crimes tribunal, such as those set up for the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide, to try senior leaders such as Mr Hilal.But a UN commission of inquiry concluded at the end of January that it did not believe that genocide had taken place in Darfur. Instead, it suggested that the attacks may be counted as “crimes against humanity, and recommended individuals responsible for the most serious should be tried by the International Criminal Court. He said: “They [The government] are the ones that gave the PDF guns. They’re the ones that recruited the PDF; they’re the ones that pay their salaries; they give them their ID cards.

It has also promised repeatedly to disarm the militias in Darfur and blamed the continuing violence in the region on its inability to bring the groups under control.But Mr Hilal said the government had the ability to disarm the PDF – a paramilitary group that is part of the Janjaweed – if it chose to do so. Now, the UN says that it is determined to continue fighting the militias and to dismantle their camps hidden deep inside the nearby mountains. Jean- Francois Collot d’Escuries, chief of staff for UN troops in Congo, told reporters: “Our forces will keep putting pressure on the ground until these militia are dismantled entirely.”The UN had sent peacekeepers to remote areas to provide food and shelter for people who had fled their homes, but the organisation has now said it will have to suspend humanitarian assistance to 54,000 people in the region as the area is becoming more violent.Leaders of the Lendu community accused the UN of seeking revenge for the killing of the Bangladeshi peacekeepers. We’ve gone to the people to tell them to join the PDF [militia] and defend your country, defend the land, defend the country’s most important things, and that you have to fight for your survival and the country’s stability.”The Sudanese government has always said the violence in Darfur was caused by ancient tribal rivalries, and that it had never encouraged or supported one side over the other. In an interview with Human Rights Watch, he said: “The government has told us to mobilise people. A powerful Sudanese sheikh, widely regarded as a senior leader of the Janjaweed militia, has said that the Sudanese government in Khartoum asked him to supply fighters to attack civilians in Darfur.
Musa Hilal, described the by the US State Department as a Janjaweed co-ordinator, said the government had asked him to mobilise the 300,000 tribesmen he claims to be responsible for.

The country has sufferedfive years of civil war that killed nearly four million people. Elections were scheduled for June but they have now been postponed until October because of the continuing violence.. One community leader, Batsi Thewi, said at least three women and several children had been attacked. He added: “Yesterday our people were attacked by armoured cars and from the air Bombs were dropped on civilian areas Bodies have been burnt inside houses. Buildings have been crushed by armoured cars.”The UN’s mission in Congo, made up of 16,000 personnel from 100 different countries, is its largest peacekeeping operation. A UN inquiry found that peacekeepers had abused girls as young as 13, and admitted that the abuse had destroyed the local people’s trust in the UN mission. The UN head of mission, William Lacy Swing, said this week’s battles indicated a harder line from the organisation in its mission to bring peace and stability to the country.

“Yes, we will be more active and more robust in carrying out the protection mandate,” he told Reuters.That mission has recently been undermined by a sex scandal, where women and girls from camps in Bunia accused peacekeepers of raping them or trading food for sex. It’s time to put an end to this militia.” Humanitarian groups believe that since 1999, fighting in the violent, lawless north-eastern district of Ituri has killed more than 50,000 people and forced another 500,000 to flee their homes.UN peacekeepers in the Congo have been criticised for years for being ineffective; in 2003 and 2004, they were defeated by militia groups that then went on to murder hundreds of civilians. United Nations peacekeepers have killed up to 60 militiamen in a gun battle in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the wake of an ambush in which19 soldiers from Bangladesh were killed and mutilated last week.
The clash between the UN forces and the Lendu fightersoutside Bunia on Tuesday was the deadliest operation in the organisation’s six-year mission in Congo. A UN spokesman Eliane Nabaa said: “The group continues to loot, kill and rape these people, making life miserable. The UN had sent in more than 200 Pakistani soldiers, backed by an attack helicopter and armoured vehicles. Two peacekeepers were wounded and have been airlifted to South Africa.Militiamen from the Lendu Nationalist and Integrationist Front have been attacking villages of the rival Hema tribe for several years.