'A Ticking Bomb'

What is your perspective?
I have refrained from speaking up with the optimists about Darfur, but we have a hope that we can turn the negative trends into positive trends by the talks starting, the reduction of violence, and common positions reached on compensation, return to villages, return to homes, and power sharing. If that's the case, then Sudan has a great opportunity of healing. The perspectives of not succeeding on the political track are scary, because you have the frustration and the anger inside the camps that I have seen so much of all over Darfur. People have been in those camps for three to four years now. You also have the sad fact that land is taken over by people who don't own that land, and there is competition between tribes about land that has been deserted. This is a ticking bomb, and we have to deal with this in a political way and not solve those issues by violence. The military operations and peacekeeping operations are absolutely essential. They are mutually reinforcing the efforts that we are doing in the political realm, but without a peace to keep, peacekeeping becomes futile.

© 2007