Sudan orders US aid agencies to withdraw from Beja area
March 5, 2006 (ASMARA) — A U.S.-based aid agency suspended operations Sunday in Sudan’s troubled northeastern region after the government ordered the only two international charity groups to withdraw from the Beja area, an official said.
It was unclear what motivated the expulsion of The International Rescue Committee, or IRC, and the Samaritans Purse Relief International, a North Carolina-based group run by the son of U.S. evangelist Billy Graham, said Robert Warwick, IRC’s director for Eritrea and northeastern Sudan.
There was no immediate comment from the government.
The New York-based International Rescue Committee, whose operation in northeastern Sudan helps some 45,000 people, will complete pulling out two international staff and 25 Sudanese workers Sunday, Warwick told The Associated Press.
The Beja area is one of Sudan’s least developed and most neglected. Poverty-related illnesses, including tuberculosis, are common and illiteracy are a major problem.
The International Rescue Committee and Samaritan Purse are the only international charity groups providing food aid, basic health care, vaccination, safe drinking water and education services as well as training midwives in an effort to curb high rates of deaths during childbirth in the region.
There are fears that the expulsion of the two agencies will lead to a serious humanitarian crisis in the forgotten corner of Africa’s largest nation, an E.U. official said.
The official said Sudan’s government expelled the aid agencies from the region possibly because it thought it could get away with the move because the international community is preoccupied with the conflict in the country’s western Darfur region, where African tribesmen have rebelled against the Arab-dominated central government.
The Beja Congress, an exiled group representing numerous eastern Sudan tribes, criticized the decision to expel the aid groups.
“They expelled them because they want to make the lives of our people even more miserable and much more difficult -and remember these are people who have already lost a lot and are suffering untold hardships,” said Asmat Ali, head of the group’s relief wing. “We know definitely that the result of this action will be even more deaths for our children and women from food shortages and health care.”
“The international community should intervene and compel the government of Sudan to reverse this criminal and inhumane order,” said Ali, whose group is also a member of the umbrella Sudanese opposition group, the Eritrean-headquartered National Democratic Alliance.
Last year, the alliance signed an accord with the Sudanese government to end its 16-year low-intensity conflict and support a separate peace deal that ended the 21-year southern civil war.
The Beja group, however, rejected the accord, saying it failed to meet its demands for a share of wealth and power in the northeastern region.
(ST/AP)