Samuel Totten Pens Op-Ed Piece for The Morning News
Posted on 8/27/2007
The following piece ran on Aug. 19, 2007, in the Opinion section of The Morning News.
Darfur Suffering Continues: More Bombings, Not Enough Food
By Samuel Totten
Some prognosticators and human rights dilettantes – within the U.S. government and certain nongovernmental organizations – have repeatedly claimed throughout the early months of the summer that the situation in Darfur (where a genocide has raged for the past four years in which the government of Sudan and its Arab cohort, the Janjaweed, have killed upward of at least 250,000 black Africans) is better today than it has been for years. Some have also claimed that genocide is no longer taking place in Darfur. Time and again, I have asked many of these same individuals what they are basing such claims on, and they have, more or less replied, "Well, that's what I've heard" or "That's what so and so (some U.S. government official) has said, and he was there recently."
Well, I am here to inform them and the world that neither the killing in the villages and camps in Darfur for internally displaced people nor the suffering in the latter and the refugee camps is over. I base my assertions on the fact that just two weeks ago a major bombing of black African villages was carried out by the Sudanese government and on the data I recently collected during the course of a research study carried out in refugee camps along the Chad/Sudan border.
More specifically, in mid-July, Sudanese military planes carried out aerial bombings in North Darfur sending some 25,000 black Africans fleeing for their lives. The United Nations reported that "a very visible consequence of the increasing pace of displacement is the increasing population of IDP camps – many of which can no longer absorb new arrivals." What that means is that the increase in black African deaths will not solely result from the bombings and shootings, but from malnutrition, a lack of water and a lack of adequate medical care due to the overwhelming numbers of refugees flooding the camps. Genocide scholars refer to the latter as "genocide by attrition."
Over and above the aforementioned attack, the combined actions of the Arabs in the region and the government of Sudan are contributing to an ever-increasing volatility. For example, the U.N. recently reported that Arabs from Chad and Niger continue to cross into Darfur in "unprecedented numbers," an estimated 30,000 or more, loaded down with all of their worldly goods including their herds (e.g., camels, cows, goats). It appears as if the government of Sudan is intent on repopulating the land with Arabs. This is land from which the black Africans of Darfur have been brutally driven over the past four years.
The horrors, insults, injury and death don't end there. In early June of this year, the U.N. also reported that children in Sudan – and particularly those in Darfur, continue to be kidnapped and forced to serve as soldiers on the battlefield, as slave laborers and as sexual slaves.
And that is just what is taking place in Darfur.
What I recently heard while in the U.N. Commission on Human Rights refugee camps (Gaga and Forchana) presents yet another view of the ongoing misfortune that has been visited upon the black Africans of Darfur. The most plaintive statement I heard was from a sheik (leader of a village) who said, "We're always hungry." Repeatedly, I heard that the refugees were not receiving enough food and that which they did receive (sorghum and other grains) they needed to have milled, for which they were "charged" half of their original allotment. Over and above that, in the impoverished camps, food is often used as the refugees' main source of bartering – for clothes, tools and other essentials.
Over and over again I also heard – from both the men and women I interviewed – that in the very place they have sought sanctuary, in the refugee camps in Chad, the female black Africans are still being subjected to rape – this time at the hands of Chadian men who attack the girls and women as they leave the camp in order to forage for firewood.
Although each refugee camp now has a medical "centre," the medical attention is less than ideal. I heard story after story of babies suffering from acute diarrhea. I saw babies with bloated stomachs, and I met women who suffered from urinary tract problems who "feel hot inside" when attempting to go to the toilet. Nothing the doctors have prescribed, they say, has done any good.
Possibly the most debilitating situation of all is that neither the adults nor the children have anything to do in the camps – or at least very little. That is true because the adults, most of whom are farmers, are not allotted any land and the children, while attending school, have nothing to do after their half-day of education is over. There are no extracurricular programs, no sports fields, no basketball courts. While many of the children are bored, lack of hope among the adults is palpable and pervasive.
Many of the refugees have heard about the potential deployment of U.N. troops to Darfur, but most are quite skeptical and not inclined to continue to put their hopes into something that has been promised time and again only to be swept away with a wave of the hand by the Sudanese government.
Now is the time to bombard President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with e-mails urging them to stand fast in their commitment to the planned intervention in Darfur and to urge them not to allow Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to dilute the intervention by, for example, finagling a reduction in the number of U.N. troops now agreed upon or to alter the date of the deployment of the U.N. mission (December 2007). Al-Bashir is a wily master of deceit and has already managed – with the assistance of China, France and Great Britain – to weaken the peacekeeping mission mandate by virtually voiding the peacekeepers' right to seize weapons from the Janjaweed (Arab militia supported by the government of Sudan) and the original goal of slapping sanctions on Khartoum if it reneges on its promise to allow the U.N. force into Darfur.
Enough is enough! Please act now before more people suffer grievous death at the hands of murderers and the result of starvation, dehydration, injuries and illnesses that go unattended all because of al-Bashir's policies, actions, equivocating and outright lies.
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