Genocide by Attrition in Sudan
By Eric Reeves, The Washington Post
April 6, 2008 — Sudan’s National Islamic Front regime has begun its sixth year of
genocidal counterinsurgency warfare in the vast western region of
Darfur, targeting African civilian populations perceived as the primary
support for fractious rebel groups. Given the length of the conflict,
news reports have inevitably taken on a grimly familiar and repetitive
character that obscures the impending cataclysm of human destruction.
Without significant improvement in security on the ground — for
civilians and the humanitarians upon whom they increasingly depend —
deaths in the coming months will reach a staggering total. What Khartoum
was unable to accomplish with the massive violence of 2003-04, entailing
wholesale destruction of African villages, will be achieved through a
“genocide by attrition.” Civilians displaced into camps or surviving
precariously in rural areas will face unprecedented shortfalls in
humanitarian assistance, primarily food and potable water.
A recent U.N. map indicating aid access throughout Darfur shows that a
large majority of people in the region are in areas with highly limited
humanitarian access or none at all. The consensus among nongovernmental
aid organizations is that they have access to only 40 percent of the
population in need; 2.5 million of the 4.3 million Darfuris affected by
conflict — primarily women and children — can’t be securely reached by
those attempting to provide food, clean water, shelter and primary
medical care.
And things are poised to get much worse.
Paralyzing seasonal rains begin in earnest in June throughout the
region. In eastern Chad, an obscenely underreported humanitarian crisis
has put half a million Darfuri refugees and Chadian displaced persons at
acute risk because of insecurity spilling over from Darfur. A European
Union force deploying to eastern Chad may provide some of the protection
necessary to halt the most threatening violence, but much depends on
whether the force is perceived as an extension of a long-term French
military presence that has supported Chadian President Idriss Déby.
In Darfur itself, however, the protection force authorized by the U.N.
Security Council last July has stalled badly. Little more than a
slightly augmented version of the African Union mission, it risks
failing soon if it cannot do much better than its weak and undermanned
predecessor. Khartoum refuses to accept key contingents from non-African
countries and obstructs force deployment and operations in a range of
ways. Indeed, nothing contributes more to what Human Rights Watch
recently described as “chaos by design.” While a variety of rebel
groups, bandits and opportunistic armed elements contribute to the
violence that threatens humanitarians, Khartoum has invested virtually
nothing in providing security for Darfuris or humanitarians. On the
contrary, reports from the field make clear that a climate of hostility,
obstruction and abuse defines the working environment for all aid
organizations. Khartoum still refuses to disarm its brutal Arab militia
forces, the Janjaweed. Recently, in a campaign reminiscent of the worst
military violence of the genocide’s early years, Khartoum’s regular
ground and air forces coordinated with the Janjaweed in massive
scorched-earth assaults against civilian villages in West Darfur.
But it is the onset of this year’s heavy rains that may well mark the
tipping point. A great many people weakened by five years of conflict
and deprivation won’t make it through the traditional “hunger gap” —
the period between spring planting and fall harvest. Last fall’s
harvests were disastrous, especially in North and South Darfur. Food
reserves have never been lower, and because of insecurity the U.N. World
Food Program has not been able to position adequate food stocks in the
areas least accessible during the rainy season. Once the rains come —
severing road corridors, turning dry river beds into
impassable torrents and creating a terrain of mud — it will be almost
impossible to move in many areas. The insecurity preventing humanitarian
access will give way to sheer physical impossibility.
The international community has waited far too long to come to terms
with the brutal motives behind Khartoum’s simultaneous blocking of a
U.N.-authorized protection force and its unconstrained harassment of
humanitarian operations. Nothing short of the most urgent deployment of security forces will allow food to be moved into areas of greatest need.
And nothing less than an equally urgent commitment to protect aid
operations will permit an expanded humanitarian reach in the critical
three months before the start of the rainy season. If Khartoum is not
confronted over its deadly policies of fostering insecurity while
obstructing humanitarian operations, then we may measure the
consequences in hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The choice is
before us now.
Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College, is the author of “A Long
Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.” He is a
consultant to several human rights and humanitarian organizations in
Sudan.