Sudan's marauding militias are maintaining at least 16 military camps in Darfur, some alongside the Sudanese army, despite Khartoum's pledges to disarm the fighters, Human Rights Watch has said.
The New York-based rights group said its own survey, based on witnesses, showed the Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed and blamed for atrocities against African villagers, shared control with the army in five of the 16 camps.
"Even more ominous, the Sudanese government has incorporated members of the Janjaweed militia and its leaders into the police and the Sudanese army," the report on Friday said.
The rights group called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Sudanese government officials for not fulfilling a pledge to disarm and neutralise the Janjaweed, especially those in militia camps.
"Throughout the time Khartoum was supposedly reining in the Janjaweed, these camps have been operating in plain sight," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the group's Africa division.
Jemera Rone, a Human Rights Watch researcher who just returned from Darfur, told Reuters, "These are military camps. There are several hundred Janjaweed based in each of these camps." She said a number of them were close to barren camps where the Janjaweed had herded African villagers.
Since the Janjaweed shared some of the camps with the government, "it is clear the government has no intention to disarm and neutralise them," she said. "They have actually not lifted a finger to do that."
"These are not the only camps, but they are the ones people were telling us about and are still active," she added. "If we can find this out talking to the victims, how hard could it be to find those camps and disarm them?"
The Security Council next week deliberates on Sudan's pledges to disarm and prosecute the Janjaweed, accused of widespread killings, rape and uprooting villagers in a struggle over arable land. The council has threatened unspecified sanctions but no action is expected next week.
The Sudanese government has disclaimed responsibility for arming the Janjaweed to fight two African rebel groups. But Human Rights Watch said collaboration was close in attacking villages since early 2003 in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The group said the United States and other nations with satellite capacity should make available past and present photographs of the locations of these Janjaweed camps to confirm and pinpoint their existence.
Sudan's government turned to the Janjaweed militias as auxiliary forces to suppress a revolt among African villagers that broke out in western Sudan early last year.
The violence has driven more than a million people off their land in what the United Nations says is the world's worst humanitarian disaster.