Tsunami yes, but what about Darfur?
By Hana Baba, the Pacific News Service
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 18, 2005 — When disaster hit Asia last month, the world made me proud to be its citizen: People from all corners of the globe showed compassion, donating to the victims of the tsunami in person, by mail, over the phone and online. It was the dignified thing to do. The world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, competed in dishing out hundreds of millions of dollars in relief.
As an American, I am proud of my country’s generosity, even if our government did need a little scolding nudge at first. But there’s another side to me. Like many Americans, I’m a daughter of immigrants. My parents came to this country from Sudan, a country that has seen, and is seeing, its share of turmoil. I lived nearly a third of my 29 years in Sudan, and have family there now. And, as a Sudanese-American, I am troubled.
Until Dec. 26, according to the United Nations, the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, was the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. One and a half million people have been uprooted from their homes. The World Health Organization says up to 10,000 people are dying every month — not from the fighting, but from hunger and disease. Experts warn that this figure is likely to grow rapidly in light of food deficits expected early this year.
Sudan analyst Eric Reeves of Smith College, one of few who has attempted a serious analysis of mortality in Darfur, estimates that approximately 370,000 people have died since the rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army came to international attention back in February 2003. They are fighting for an independent Darfur, and the Sudanese government, in fighting them, sought the help of local militias. Amidst the chaos, the poor and innocent continue to suffer and perish.
And while governments have done what they do best — politicizing a humanitarian issue, and bickering about whether to label the disaster “genocide” or “war” — the agony continues, and the aid is nowhere near enough. The European Union gave a mere $281 million to Darfur relief. (Germany alone boasted a hefty $1 billion dollars in aid to the tsunami victims.) U.S. aid to Darfur is even less, a little over one-fifth of the amount going to the Indian Ocean crisis. And British aid agencies like Oxfam and Save the Children have quit Darfur due to fears for their safety.
So the question nagging at the back of many Sudanese minds today is, Why was the Western response to a tragedy in Asia more immediate, and generous, than to one in Africa? No, I’m not pulling out the worn-out race card. It’s simpler than that. It happened a decade ago. NATO responded to the Bosnian genocide rather swiftly, but it took three quarter-million Rwandan lives before action was taken there. 2003 witnessed between 3 and 4 million Congolese brutally slain in fighting in central Africa. The mortality rate in the Congo in May of 2003 was 2,500 deaths per day. The U.N. mission was shamefully understaffed and Western governments reluctant to interfere, some calling it “a complex situation.”
And then there is Africa’s No. 1 killer disease, AIDS. According to U.N. AIDS, every 13 seconds an African dies of AIDS. Every nine seconds, an African contracts AIDS. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, a total of 27 million died of AIDS by the end of 2003 — finally prompting President Bush to propose $15 billion in AIDS relief that year. But it took 27 million lives for a Western government to take the epidemic seriously and act.
Could it be that the almighty dollar is playing its ever-so-familiar role? After all, not many U.S. or Western interests depend on Africa compared to the important economic relationships with Indonesia, Thailand or Europe, for example. South Asia is a vital trading partner to the West. Thailand is a tourist magnet and a major manufacturer of consumer goods. And Sudan? Well, Sudan is just another struggling African country, with its tribal wars, a drought here and there…
On television I watched a woman from Idaho choking back tears. She said that when she saw footage of European tourists who survived the tsunami she wept, because these were people she could relate to. And so she donated $100. I wonder who will relate to a cholera-stricken African baby, orphaned, with no hope of living? Or to a young refugee mother, widowed by the famine, and left to dig into the sand dunes for clean water for her thirsty children?
I had hoped the world’s wealthiest and most mighty would also be fair and equitable — at least in times of distress. The United Nations is begging donor nations not to neglect the world’s ongoing disasters like the one in Darfur, but will they heed the call? When they do, will it be too late? Or will they prove me wrong, and rush millions more in emergency aid to the people of Darfur, even if they can’t give anything in return? I’ve learned not to hold my breath, but I anxiously wait to be pleasantly surprised.
Hana Baba, 29, is a Sudanese American, intern at KALW-FM 91.7 in San Francisco