Suffering in Sudan: one million flee 'world's worst humanitarian crisis'

0 Comments | Current Events, Sept 17, 2004

DARFUR. Sudan -- Last January, while collecting water from a well on the outskirts of her village in Darfur, a region of the African nation of Sudan, 26-year-old Anima Abaker Mohammed heard the drone of airplanes approaching. Fifteen minutes later, bombs exploded all around her, killing several of her fellow villagers and their animals. in the confusion, Mohammed searched desperately for her 10-year-old son but couldn't find him.

After the planes, came Sudanese soldiers and the militia known as the Janjaweed ("evil horsemen" in Arabic) on camels and horses. Mohammed fled to the hills with a few of the family's donkeys. When she looked back toward the well, she saw her son standing there trying to protect some of the family's other animals. As the soldiers surrounded her son, Mohammed closed her eyes and prayed.

When the sound of gunfire in the village subsided hours later, Mohammed returned to the well in search of her son. She found his body among the many dead villagers. Mohammed quickly gathered the boy's remains and buried him on a hillside.

A week later, Mohammed and her remaining children gathered their few possessions and began the long trek to safety in the neighboring country of Chad. That's where she told her story to a New Yorker reporter inside a makeshift home of mud and sticks outside a refugee camp. (A refugee is a person who flees to escape war or natural disaster.)

The United Nations estimates that 200,000 Darfurian refugees are now in Chad. More than a million other refugees live in protected camps inside Darfur. Those are the lucky ones. As many as 50,000 Darfurians have been killed, unable to escape the violence.

"We are facing a disaster," said High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The relief agency has called the situation in Darfur one of the "worst humanitarian crises in the world today."

What's Going On?

The crisis boiled over in early 2003 after years of strife between nomadic Arab herders and African farmers over the region's scarce arable land. The African farmers protested the herders' attacks to Sudan's Arab-controlled government, but the government did nothing. Darfur's African inhabitants claim that the government unfairly supports the Arab minority in the region.

In January, two African rebel groups attacked government targets in Darfur. The government responded with air raids and troops to crush the uprising. The government also enlisted the help of Arab militias to fight the rebels. Militias are fighting groups that aren't formal elements of an army. The Sudanese government denies that it supports the Janjaweed, though human rights organizations dispute that claim.

Human Rights Watch, one such group, has accused the Sudanese government of supporting ethnic cleansing, the forcing of people from one religion or ethnicity to flee an area. And with more and more Africans dying, the organization accuses the government of genocide, the systematic killing of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

Can Sudan Be Saved?

The current fighting in Darfur is only the latest chapter of Sudan's violent history. Apart from an 11-year peace from 1972 to 1983, Sudan has been entrenched in civil war since it gained independence from Britain in 1956. The Darfurian conflict erupted just as a long civil war between northern and southern Sudan was winding down. That war was fought between the mainly Muslim north and the mostly Christian south. (See Time Trip.)

To try to end the current conflict in Darfur, the United Nations recently passed a resolution demanding that Sudan disarm the militia. If Sudan does not act, the United Nations says, it may impose diplomatic penalties.

Representatives from both sides of the conflict met recently in Abuja, Nigeria, to broker a peace, but little real progress was made. Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo proposed sending 2,000 African Union peacekeeping troops to Darfur, but the Sudanese government agreed to admit only 300 troops.

Aid worker Celina DeSola, of AmeriCares, a U.S. relief organization, is doing her part to ease the suffering in Sudan one person at a time. Stationed at a refugee camp in northern Chad, she wakes up at dawn each day to help disperse medical supplies and water purification systems. Conditions at the camp, DeSola says, are harsh, and severe seasonal rains have made matters worse.

Though the work can be difficult DeSola finds it rewarding. One day a refugee invited DeSola inside her tiny tent. The women shared a cup of tea and talked. "It really put the conflict into perspective. People are people. We are the same in so many ways; it's just our circumstances that are different," she told Current Events. DeSola, who has traveled the world helping people survive wars and natural disasters, was particularly inspired by the people of Sudan. "They are so strong and courageous. They seldom complain or ask for more. It's inspiring to meet people who manage to keep their will to stay alive."