January 27, 2004
The scale of the human catastrophe in Darfur (far western Sudan) daily comes more fully into view, as news reports and UN and other humanitarian assessments coalesce more fully into a picture of shockingly vast destruction, displacement, suffering, and death. In a deeply alarming expansion of the numbers used by the UN to characterize the crisis in Darfur, the international body now estimates that there are more than 1 million internally displaced persons in Darfur, a huge increase from the figure of 600,000 reported only several days ago in a number of UN publications. This is in addition to the more than 110,000 desperate people the UN estimates have now fled into neighboring Chad. The UN also now estimates that a staggering 3.5 million people—more than half the population of Darfur—are “war-affected.” This represents a terrifying increase from the previous figure of 1 million. Assessment information comes from a senior humanitarian aid official involved in responding to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Darfur.
The immense scale of the Darfur catastrophe is perversely matched by the almost total lack of humanitarian access, which is resolutely denied by the Khartoum regime to virtually all of Darfur, and is too insecure in most places in any event. We simply do not know what casualty figures to attach to these huge estimates of those displaced and affected by the war. But we do know that agriculture has been profoundly disrupted by war throughout Darfur for almost a year, and that foodstocks are critically low, with almost no promise of relief from the next harvest. “Global Acute Malnutrition” rates of 25% in some populations were being reported by Save the Children (UK) in early December 2003; the lack of humanitarian access insures that this number is only increasing, very likely dramatically.
We also know from the terrible condition of people fleeing from Darfur into Chad that those who are unable to make the trek are extremely vulnerable. Disproportionately women and children, these refugees (more than 110,000) are in acute danger of dying where the are. The UN’s World Food Program reported yesterday:
“40 percent of the refugees from fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur province, were children under five. About 75 percent of the adult refugees were women, [World Food Program spokesman Ramin Rafirasme] added. At present, most of the refugees are living in makeshift shelters of branches and grass. Their food stocks are exhausted and many are suffering from diarrhoea and respiratory infections—made worse by huge swings in temperature between the day and night.
“‘The humanitarian situation in the border area has quickly become very serious and as the need for assistance grows, relief stocks are dwindling,’ Rafirasme said. ‘We need fast cash contributions to buy food locally and within the region.’
“‘All the ingredients are in place for a rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation,’ the WFP spokesman warned, noting that the condition of refugees around the border town of Tine was becoming ‘especially precarious.'”
(UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, January 26, 2004)
This is the population inside Chad, where there is humanitarian access—if not humanitarian aid. Inside Darfur itself, hundreds of thousands of the “war-affected” are in conditions even more precarious. The casualty figures, if they were obtainable, might already be reaching toward tens of thousands of innocent human beings. We simply don’t know. Khartoum is allowing no access, and over-flight assessments have yet to be undertaken in a serious way by the UN and humanitarian organizations struggling to confront the undeniable human realities on the ground in Chad. (A useful reference map of Chad/western Darfur can be found at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/chad.gif)
The lack of a response to this crisis is an international disgrace. It is all the greater because so much of the humanitarian crisis is being deliberately engineered by the National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum. The regime, in addition to denying humanitarian access to virtually all of Darfur, has accelerated those military policies that have done most to create displacement and disruption of agricultural production. In particular, there are now daily reports of bombing attacks on civilian targets, a savage reprise of Khartoum’s military tactics in southern Sudan over many years. In addition to yesterday’s dispatches from the Chad-Sudan border on Khartoum’s bombing attacks, both Reuters and Agence-France Presse have reports again today (January 27, 2004), offering a ghastly glimpse of the brutal attacks and the consequent human death and suffering:
“A fly was feasting on the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around Moukthar Abakar’s shredded cheek as he lay in a hospital bed in a Chadian town close to the border with Sudan, where he was injured last week, and from where one could still hear the sound of exploding bombs.
“Abakar is among more than 100,000 refugees in Chad from Sudan’s Darfur region, where for almost a year government troops backed by militia groups have been fighting rebels who took up arms to protest their marginalisation by Khartoum.
“‘I was grazing my cows and sheep in the Cornaye wadi when I saw a distant plane open up,’ mumbled Abakar. It is difficult for him to talk now because his upper jaw has been fractured. “It must have been about 11:00 am. I didn’t think they would go for me… Afterwards, I don’t remember. I was unconscious for two days before they brought me here by camel and then in a car,’ he said.
“‘Planes target villages where there are civilians, but the rebels are outside,’ said Abakar, his left eye weeping uncontrollably and blood coagulating under his nose.
“‘We don’t even know why they are bombing us,’ said another patient, Sabour Mohamat, 15, whose left leg has had to be amputated. ‘We don’t know the rebels. We just want to be free to graze our cattle,’ added the herdsman, who, like Abakar and three friends lying in neighbouring beds, was wounded while doing just that. ‘The others are dead,’ said Mohamat.”
(Agence France-Presse [Tine, Chad] January 27, 2004)
The frequency of bombing attacks is suggested in today’s Reuters dispatch:
“The Justice and Equality Movement says the [Khartoum] government has bombed 15 to 25 villages in the western Darfur region daily since mid-December, when peace talks with the government hosted by Chad broke down. The rebels put the death toll from these attacks at about 2,000 civilians, although it is impossible to independently verify attacks over a vast area of desert and savannah.
“A steady procession of wounded trooping into a medical tent on the Chadian side of Tine with shreds of gangrenous skin hanging from the stumps of limbs testify to the damage the bombing is inflicting on the civilian population.” (Reuters [Tine, Chad/Sudan border] January 27, 2004)
In attempting to make sense of these bombing attacks it is important to remember that Khartoum has no real military bombers in its air force, only retrofitted Antonov cargo planes, from which shrapnel-loaded barrel-bombs are simply rolled out the back cargo bay at high altitudes. They are notoriously inaccurate for any serious military purposes, though they are exquisitely effective as weapons of civilian terror. These basic facts make clear the outrageous mendacity of Khartoum’s officially proffered account of these bombing attacks on civilians (made necessary by the gradually rise news profile of Darfur). Associated Press today reports from Khartoum:
“Insurgents suffered heavy losses in bombing raids that targeted rebel camps along Sudan’s border with Chad, a senior Sudanese government official said Tuesday. The attacks in recent days are part of a government bid to crush the insurgency in Darfur, an impoverished region in Sudan’s west. Gutbi el-Mahdi, President Omar el-Bashir’s political adviser, denied rebel accusations that the government was targeting civilians. El-Mahdi told The Associated Press that the rebels had suffered ‘a lot of losses.'” (Associated Press, January 27, 2004)
This is transparently and utterly preposterous, both because of the inaccurate nature of Antonov bombing attacks and Khartoum’s lack of reconnaissance ability. Even if there were “rebel camps” (in fact, as Darfur refugees have repeatedly noted, insurgency forces encamp outside villages), Khartoum would have no way of knowing which villages to attack or what the effects of their bombings might be. This statement is nothing but a deliberate lie by Gutbi el-Mahdi, one of the most notoriously vicious of the NIF inner circle, promulgated only because the regime is beginning to feel the pressure of the truth emerging from Darfur.
The required international response to the accelerating catastrophe in Darfur, and inside Chad, is as obvious today as it was more than a month ago, when UN Undersecretary General Jan Egeland declared that Darfur was probably “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world” (“The World,” BBC/Public Radio International, December 18, 2003). Khartoum must be given an ultimatum: either the regime effects an immediate cease-fire, enters into peace talks with meaningful international auspices, and allows unfettered humanitarian
access—or the international community will mount an urgent cross-border humanitarian intervention.
In fact, Khartoum is adamantly refusing every one of these terms, and declaring as much to various international actors—as if daring the world to issue such an ultimatum. To date, the response of the international community can only encourage such obduracy, and this in turn insures the deaths of many thousands, perhaps many tens of thousands, of innocent civilians. The evidence available makes such a conclusion simply inescapable.
Perhaps this is the time to recall that on October 22, 2003, the US State Department—in noting that President Bush had certified Khartoum was indeed “negotiating in good faith”—promised that “if no comprehensive peace agreement is in place by January 21, 2004,” then “the President intends to provide an assessment of the parties’ participation in and commitment to the peace process” (Statement from the Office of the US State Department Spokesman, “Sudan Peace Act Presidential Determination,” October 22, 2003).
Does Khartoum’s precipitously contriving to force suspension of the Naivasha peace talks constitute good faith? If not, will the President say as much? When can we expect to hear of his further “assessment”? And when will the President find his voice on Darfur? How can the phrase “comprehensive peace agreement” have any meaning for Sudan while the catastrophe in Darfur continues?
Responding to what is occurring in Darfur is the responsibility of the international community, not just the United States. But the failure of the US to confront an intransigent Khartoum, a regime willing to make peace in neither Darfur nor Naivasha, is no less a failure because it keeps much company.
No voice is more powerful than that of the US; no silence more consequential.
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