Aerial photos show major destruction in nearly 400 villages in western Sudan: USAID
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS, June 24, 2004 (AP) — U.S. aerial photos of the Darfur region of western Sudan show major destruction in nearly 400 villages and a new U.S. assessment reveals fighting or threatened attacks in every single camp for displaced civilians, the U.S. aid chief said.
Andrew Natsios, administrator of the Agency for International Development, warned Wednesday that time is running out to help 2 million Sudanese in desperate need of aid, and he said his agency’s estimate that 350,000 could die over the next nine months “is conservative.”
Relief experts consider that there’s an emergency if one person in 10,000 dies every day, he said. “We’re already up in some of the camps to four people a day dying per 10,000,” and in one camp the death rate for children under the age of five is now 22 per day per 10,000, he said.
Natsios put the blame for the crisis squarely on the Sudanese government, saying U.S. and U.N. reports from the country show clearly that the Sudanese military is directly connected to Arab militias fighting in Darfur known as the Janjaweed.
“They arm them, they use them, and now they have to stop them,” Natsios said in an interview with two reporters after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who is planning to visit Sudan soon and make a first-hand assessment of the situation in Darfur.
Last week, Annan said the United Nations had asked the Sudanese government to take steps to contain the Janjaweed. The government denies any complicity in the militia attacks against the black African population, blaming the trouble in Darfur on rebels and criminal gangs, but Annan said “from all accounts they can do something about the Janjaweed.”
Natsios said that despite constant announcements from the Sudanese government about “all the things they’ve done to improve things,” virtually nothing has changed on the ground.
In order to run a relief operation, he said, four conditions are essential in every camp -security, an end to atrocities such as mass rapes of women or massacring men, access to the people which will be increasingly difficult with the start of the rainy season, and enough humanitarian workers from the United Nations and other organizations.
The latest weekly assessment of conditions in the 36 camps for displaced people in Darfur, which he released for the first time, showed that in every single one security was poor and those taking refuge faced attacks or threats of attacks.
“They’ve got to stop stonewalling the relief effort,” Natsios said of the government. “What they need to do is enforce the agreement they signed” in Chad on April 8 to allow humanitarian agencies into the area.
Fighting erupted in February 2003 when African tribes in Darfur rebelled against what they regarded as unjust treatment by the Sudanese government in their struggle over land and resources with Arab countrymen. Thousands have been killed and more than 1 million have been forced from their homes.
Natsios said the United States had the National Aeronautics and Space Agency take aerial photographs of the destruction of villages in Darfur.
“We’ve now analyzed 576 villages, 300 of which are completely destroyed, 76 of which are substantially destroyed,” he said. “When we checked them on the ground, we confirmed what we found. We are going to watch them, using aerial photography for the duration to track what’s happening.”
On Saturday, Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir ordered the military to begin disarming all militia groups. But Ambassador Michael Ranneberger, a U.S. State Department expert on Sudan , said “until now, we have not seen any systematic action to rein in the Janjaweed.”
“What we’ve seen is a series of half-steps by the government in response to international pressure,” he said.
U.S. officials have been highlighting the plight of the displaced Sudanese, mindful that the world’s inattention to Rwanda a decade ago may have contributed to the genocide that occurred there.
Natsios said the U.S. government has spent US$116 million on the relief effort in Sudan -more than all other donors combined -“and we pledged US$188 million between now and the end of next year.”
The United States is moving “with a maximum sense of urgency to try to save lives,” said Ranneberger, who accompanied Natsios. “We don’t have time to sit around also and decide, is this ethnic cleansing or is this genocide, or what is it.”
Natsios said President George W. Bush has made clear to Bashir that U.S.-Sudanese relations will not be normalized “until these atrocities are stopped and until all impediments to the relief effort are ended.”
“They badly want the normalization of relations” after an agreement ending a 21-year civil war between government forces and rebels in southern Sudan , which is expected to be finalized shortly, he said.
“You cannot have peace in the south and a new civil war in the west,” Natsios said. “It’s just not going to happen.”