Darfur statistic: Her name is Miriam Adam

By G. Jefferson Price III, The Chicago Tribune

DEHOUSH, Sudan, July 24, 2005 — The grimace on Miriam Adam’s face reflects Darfur’s recent dreadful past and present, a time of war in which an estimated 180,000 people have been killed, most of them–but by no means all–by an Arab militia known as the janjaweed, armed and exhorted to mass murder by the Sudanese government in faraway Khartoum.

Adam, 25, a mother of two, was waiting patiently, sitting in the sand, dressed in a bright, saffron-colored gown wrapped around a face set in despair. She was waiting for the monthly food shipment, delivered here last month by Catholic Relief Services, one of scores of non-governmental organizations assisting survivors of Darfur’s deadly, ongoing conflict.

To the rest of the world, Adam is a statistic out of focus.

She is one of nearly 2 million people left homeless and hungry in this barren desert terrain. In villages like her home of Gushush, huts were burned to the ground, livestock and other belongings pillaged, women systematically raped and butchered or left to survive dishonored. Millions of lives were, and remain, mutilated.

The janjaweed and the anti-government rebels, joined lately by freelance murderers and bandits, continue to make life miserable for the 6.5 million people of Darfur, despite meetings that ended this month between government and rebel representatives in Abuja, Nigeria.

Even as they talked, the number of hungry people was growing. The UN World Food Program has estimated that 3.5 million–more than half the population of this western Sudanese outback–will need food assistance this year.

But while the proportions of the Darfur tragedy expand, the developed world appears to have lost much of its earlier interest in what’s happening here.

The quick visit to Sudan last week by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice included a brief stop in Darfur where, at the second-largest camp for internally displaced populations in the region, she said the U.S. is acting to help relieve the crisis. But the main reason for her visit was the recent formation of a national unity government between rebels of the south and the ruling Islamic party of the north. She said that peace agreement offered “new hope” on the similar conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur but offered no specifics on what pressure Washington would bring to bear on Khartoum to resolve the crisis.

A year and a half ago, at the height of the conflict, international attention was riveted on Darfur, on a ghastly fight between Islamic Arab Sudanese and Islamic African Sudanese.

Humanitarian agencies rushed to establish emergency operations in eastern Chad and Darfur, dealing with bureaucratic obstacles and significant delays in access to Sudan’s western region. World leaders, including President Bush, made forceful declarations about the need to end the war. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan visited Darfur.

A cease-fire was arranged and a peace process was mounted, though the firing did not cease and the peace did not proceed.

An African Union force was dispatched to monitor events, with the expectation that it would expand and do more than monitor. The United Nations Security Council passed resolution after resolution condemning the fighting and holding responsible the government in Khartoum.

Some blame the attention drift on December’s tsunami, which generated an unprecedented outpouring of generosity from people across the globe. But the tsunami was an act of nature, and bringing relief to its victims posed no political difficulties.

As the focus has drifted from Darfur, so has the momentum of response and action. Darfur is barely visible on Washington’s agenda. This despite the fact that a recent Zogby International poll, commissioned by the International Crisis Group, showed a large majority of Americans support stronger U.S. action on Darfur, particularly against the government of Sudan.

More than 80 percent said the U.S. should not tolerate the behavior of government-supported janjaweed in Darfur, and supported the establishment of a no-fly zone over the Darfur region. And despite widespread unhappiness over the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq, almost 40 percent said they would support U.S. combat troops in Darfur.

Progress on strengthening both the mandate and the size of the African Union force in Darfur has been slow. The force today is less than 3,000, with a mandate that precludes intervention. Recently, the European Union and NATO agreed to help bring in 5,000 more AU troops, and to provide the force with better equipment and training. But even that won’t happen soon enough or with sufficient strength for people like Adam and the aid workers who face a rapidly deteriorating situation.

Serious breaches in security remind everyone here that safety and accountability are no guarantees, and this catastrophe has no end in sight.

The UN has yet to enforce its resolutions condemning the Darfur atrocities and holding the Sudanese government accountable. Last month, the International Criminal Court received much attention with its announcement that it would indict Sudanese government officials responsible for the Darfur catastrophe; the government in Khartoum responded defiantly, asserting the right to try its own criminals.

At the same time, the Khartoum government jailed two officials of Doctors Without Borders who had documented the systematic rape of thousands of women by the janjaweed. They were released eventually, but the message was clear. In some respects, the defiant Sudanese government seems to be emboldened by the international community’s drift away from the Darfur crisis.

Meanwhile, Darfur continues its tragic downward spiral.

Security risks exist not only for the millions of refugees, their host communities and even nomads caught in the conflict; they exist for the agencies trying to bring help. Last year’s harvest in Darfur was paltry. Another year like it could add more hungry people to the millions already endangered. The more desperate they become, the more dangerous some of them also become in the search for food and livelihood.

Though the janjaweed are held responsible for most of the atrocities, the rebels carry a share of the blame.

Adam said her village was attacked by rebels at the height of the fighting in October 2003. “They took everything, even our clothes,” she said, speaking through an interpreter. “They killed 18 people. They kidnapped 10 men. They killed one of the men. Seven others were released. We do not know what happened to the other two.”

Humanitarian assistance

Adam was among more than 2,000 people who came recently to Dehoush to collect a monthly food ration distributed by Catholic Relief Services.

She and many of the other beneficiaries arrived at midmorning, just as the sun began its scorching assault on the desert surrounding Dehoush. Some of them made the journey from miles away. Most walked, carrying sacks and cans to hold their rations. The more fortunate ones came by donkey. A few had camels and horses.

The men wore long white gowns, their heads covered with large white turbans or smaller skullcaps. The women dressed in gowns of all colors, wrapped around their bodies. Their heads, though not their faces, were wrapped in brightly colored scarves. With the gusts of hot wind swirling the desert’s grit around them, it is a constant struggle to keep the head scarves in place.

Throughout western Darfur, the scene repeats itself once a month.

Humanitarian workers deliver food to uprooted communities that seem to exist in the middle of nowhere on an exhausted landscape, where the delivery vehicles travel on barely discernible tracks in the sand that deepen the closer they get to the border with Chad.

In an organized fashion that has evolved over years of relief work, aid workers distribute food to the thousands, and ultimately millions, of internally displaced populations. Not forgotten in this assistance are the host communities that have watched their land and resources deplete over the past year due to the flood of displaced populations. And, in some places, nomads receive assistance because their migratory routes have been blocked by the fighting, forcing them to settle near the communities.

In Amarala, near a dried-out riverbed, nomads complained that their livestock, including a herd of 3,000 camels, were taken in a raid. The community wants to farm now, and its leaders plead for seeds and tools for planting before the rainy season. “Now we have no animals. We must farm because we need food. We need seeds and tools to plant with,” said the leader of the community, Sheik Bashir Abdelrahim.

In another settlement called Tenjeke, aid is being delivered to the host community, the refugees and nearby nomads, who are disliked and feared by the others.

Even now, nomads are known to attack people from the village and those who have been forced to resettle in camps. “We are afraid to go out because we are attacked. There is no peace with those people,” said Sheik Isaac Ibrahim Yahya.

Pointing to a nearby police post recently installed, he adds, “We go to the police, but they cannot do anything. The [nomads] will kill them.”

The vulnerability of shelter

Then one finds the settlements of Gozdika and Mastura, closest to the border with Chad, where the scene is one of impoverishment and need on an unimaginable scale.

Neither of these villages was attacked, but they were surrounded by fighting–including Sudanese dropping bombs on nearby villages–that was so intense, the population fled with their livestock and belongings to neighboring Chad.

“One night, we decided to leave. We left in one hour,” said Sheik Usman Mohammed. “It was too dangerous, so we left.”

That was in October 2003, he said.

When the leaders of the communities of some 6,000 people from Gozdika and Mastura and surrounding settlements recently were assured that it was safe to return, they all went back. But they found much of their villages burned to the ground.

Now many of these returned members of the Timir, Zagawa and Ginir tribes are living in shelters with a few sticks bound on the sides and top and stuck in the ground, along with a few branches with withered leaves.

These “shelters” hardly provide protection from the scorching sun or from temperatures that can reach 120 degrees. When the rains come, the stick houses will offer no shelter, if they stand at all.

Some needs are simple enough.

“There is no grass here,” said Suleiman Yago of Mastura. “We need grass to build new homes.”

But most needs are far greater. The millions of displaced people in Darfur need food and better shelter. They need schools, sanitation facilities and health clinics. And they need water for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing.

In some large camps for internally displaced populations, non-governmental organizations have begun to provide this help. They distribute plastic tarpaulins, blankets, mats, cooking utensils, soap and other essential living items. The NGOs provide resources to build stronger shelters within the camps, and support for education and teacher training.

Some of the camps–especially the ones closer to larger towns such as El Geneina, the provincial capital of West Darfur–are acquiring a look of permanence.

Isaac Mohammed Tom, a leader of the community encamped at Medina Hujaj on the outskirts of El Geneina, acknowledged that they don’t know how long they will reside in the camps. He said his farmer community of almost 4,500 fled here in February 2004 from their homes about 20 miles away when “the janjaweed came with guns and airplanes [which likely was the Sudanese military]. They took everything. They raped and killed our women.”

In Medina Hujaj, once a resting place for Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca, Tom complained, “We can’t go more than a mile from this camp without being attacked by the janjaweed. We are not comfortable here. We want to go home, but the janjaweed are still there.”

What awaits Darfurians

Darfur always has been an unforgiving land dependent on an undependable climate, beset by shortages of everything from rain to arable land, and the abiding indifference of a faraway government.

Indifference, that is, until two years ago, when a couple of Darfurian militias, inspired by the rebel movement in the south against the government, began to revolt and the government responded with a policy of destruction led by its janjaweed proxies, igniting one of the greatest human tragedies in Africa.

Without the interest of the international community in what’s happening in western Sudan, stability for Africa’s largest country is elusive. Darfur is on its way to becoming the next calamitous event that everyone knew about but did not react forcefully or quickly enough to stop.

For people like Miriam Adam, the rest of the world is simply killing time. Without meaningful security and pressure by the outside world, the remains of villages and people will be the only indicator, for those who may one day care, that something grave and horrific happened here.

– G. Jefferson Price III, a former foreign correspondent and a former editor at The Baltimore Sun, is a consultant for Catholic Relief Services