Millions of vulnerable civilians sliding closer to starvation in Darfur

The international community fails to heed the warning signs or hold
Khartoum accountable

Eric Reeves

June 15, 2008 — Despite five years of genocidal counter-insurgency warfare in Darfur,
millions among its ravaged civilian population will soon enter a third
month receiving only half the necessary food rations from the UN’s
World Food Program (WFP). Despite the presence of the world’s largest
humanitarian relief operation, the people of Darfur begin the current
rainy season with only half the minimum kilocalorie diet necessary to
sustain human life. Since the rainy season coincides with the
traditional “hunger gap”—the period between spring planting and
fall harvest—we may expect to see significant human starvation in the
coming months, relentlessly adding to the hundreds of thousands who have
already died from ethnically-targeted violence, displacement, and
consequent malnutrition and disease. A grim genocide by attrition is
set to enter its deadliest phase.

How can this be? And why don’t the alarms sounded by humanitarian
organizations compel greater international response? Answers tell us
too much about why Darfur’s agony shows no signs of abating.

Since the beginning of May, WFP has delivered to Darfur only half the
required food tonnage. The reason is insecurity, as food convoys face
the constant threat of violent hijacking. Drivers are beaten, robbed,
and too often killed; as a result, they increasingly refuse to make the
dangerous trip through the western part of Kordofan Province and
especially inside Darfur. The Khartoum regime should of course provide
military escorts for these critical, though highly vulnerable, convoys.
But the National Islamic Front comprises the very men responsible for
orchestrating the Darfur catastrophe. Although they have made soothing
noises about protecting food convoys, they have in fact done nothing of
significance. Indeed, an ill-advised Darfuri rebel attack on
Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman in May has occasioned redeployment
of military force away from the convoy routes. Those waiting for
Khartoum to protect the vital corridors for urgently needed increases in
foodstocks will wait in vain.

Indeed, Khartoum is much more interested in militarily supporting its
proxy force of Chadian rebel groups, reportedly massing for a new
assault on N’Djamena and the regime of Idriss Déby. Khartoum holds
Déby responsible for supporting the Justice and Equality Movement
(JEM) attack on Omdurman, and this would appear to be the moment in
which the regime means to settle the score.

Just as scandalously, the protection force authorized by UN Security
Council Resolution 1769 (July 2007) has failed to improve security in
Darfur, or to protect WFP convoys. Despite almost a year of
opportunity, and two years of planning by the UN’s Department of
Peacekeeping Operations, the UN/African Union “Hybrid” Mission in
Darfur (UNAMID) is failing badly—and rapidly losing the confidence of
Darfuris. Humanitarian groups repeatedly say in private conversations
that they are fearful of being too closely associated with UNAMID
because its growing failure is perceived by Darfuri civilians and rebels
as a sign that it has implicitly sided with Khartoum. This perception
haunted the previous weak, ineffective, and vastly under-manned African
Union mission in Darfur, AMIS. In fact, AMIS has simply been
“re-hatted” with UN blue helmets (sometimes painted by the
soldiers themselves) and slightly augmented to make up what is called
“UNAMID.” Last November UN head of peacekeeping Jean-Marie
Guehenno asked all too presciently:

“Do we move ahead with the deployment of a force that will not make a
difference, that will not have the capability to defend itself and that
carries the risk of humiliation of the Security Council and the United
Nations and tragic failure for the people of Darfur?”

The question answered itself at the time, and now we are seeing the
consequences of this “tragic failure.”

Moreover, the fact that Khartoum has engaged in a widespread and
largely successful campaign of obstruction of UNAMID deployment only
fuels the deep anger and resentment among the people of Darfur who feel,
with justice, that they have been abandoned. Khartoum refuses to allow
key battalions of troops, engineers, and special forces to deploy, has
deliberately attacked UNAMID forces, and has looked on with indifference
as its Janjaweed militia allies recently humiliated a UNAMID patrol in
West Darfur, taking the soldiers’ weapons and communications gear.
For their part, the militarily capable nations of the world have done
painfully little to augment UNAMID, or to confront Khartoum over its
obstructionist tactics. As a consequence, UNAMID currently operates
without required logistics, without critical transport capacity
(especially helicopters and trucks), and without other essential
military equipment. Of a planned 26,000 civilian police and troops,
only about 9,000 are presently deployed, most AMIS holdovers.

Insecurity has not only severely compromised the delivery of food into
Darfur, it has also diminished access to what the UN estimates are 4.3
million conflict-affected persons scattered throughout a region the size
of France. The consensus among humanitarian workers on the ground is
that they have access to only about 40% of this vast
population—leaving as many as 2.5 million people without reliable
access to food, clean water, and primary medical care. Further
compromising humanitarian abilities is a relentless and intensifying
campaign by Khartoum officials to abuse, harass, and threaten
humanitarian workers. Many workers on the ground report morale is at
its worst since major humanitarian efforts began in summer 2004.

There are other causes for the deepest concern. Malnutrition rates,
especially among children under five, had risen above the emergency
threshold last fall, following a disastrous harvest in South and North
Darfur (three-quarters of Darfur’s total population). And yet
important subsequent malnutrition studies have not been disseminated
because Khartoum has objected, and humanitarian organizations—fearing
a loss of access—have acquiesced. UNICEF bears particular
responsibility in this arena, as does the humanitarian coordinator for
Sudan, Ameerah Haq (see my April 24, 2008 assessment at
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article212.html). Just as troublingly, new
malnutrition studies and collections of data are also being obstructed
by Khartoum’s génocidaires. Theirs is a patent desire to obscure the
growing threat of widespread, engineered starvation.

But such a risk grows by the day. Suleiman Jamous, previously the
senior rebel humanitarian coordinator and the most reliable of rebel
leaders, recently told me he expected that there would be large-scale
starvation in rebel-held areas (the vast majority of Darfur), at least
among communities without any livestock reserves. Not nearly enough
food has been pre-positioned prior to the rainy season, a season that
makes much of Darfur an impassable sea of mud and raging streams.
Without food pre-positioned in Darfur, there are insurmountable
logistical obstacles in providing adequate food to the immense and badly
weakened populations most at risk. Jamous also told me that he believes
well over half the “banditry” so often invoked in explanations of
insecurity in Darfur is anything but random: Khartoum either acquiesces,
is complicit, or actually orchestrates the attacks that have claimed the
lives of so many humanitarian workers, and so attenuated humanitarian
access.

Tens of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced—over 150,000
in 2008 so far. Many were displaced during the large-scale
scorched-earth campaign north of el-Geneina in February—and a
significant number of these fled into eastern Chad and extremely
uncertain humanitarian conditions. The camps for displaced persons have
long been badly overcrowded, and there is no way to accommodate many of
the newly displaced. Moreover, water tables for potable water are
dropping dangerously, increasing the risk of deadly water-borne disease
during the rainy season, especially in camps where water provision is
already below international standards.

What must not be lost in any understanding of the current phase of
Darfur’s humanitarian crisis is the deliberation with which it has
been engineered. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the
International Criminal Court, recently offered to the UN Security
Council (June 5, 2008) a searing indictment of the Khartoum regime.
Invoking the horrors of Nazi Germany and the UN failure at Srebrenica,
Moreno-Ocampo declared that the evidence he has accumulated over more
than two years of sustained investigation, authorized by the UN Security
Council, “shows an organized campaign by Sudanese officials to attack
civilians, in particular the [non-Arab] Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa, with
the objective [of] physically and mentally destroying entire
communities.”

There could be no clearer assertion of genocidal intent.

Moreno-Ocampo was just as unsparing in describing consequences of
violent attacks by Khartoum’s regular military forces and its
Janjaweed militia allies:

“Such attacks are calculated to drive entire groups into inhospitable
areas, where they die immediately, or into camps, where they die
slowly.”

Moreno-Ocampo continually emphasizes the organized and systematic
nature of Khartoum’s actions:

“In the camps, crimes and insecurity are organized.”

“Rapes of women are systematic.”

“Usurpation of [non-Arab] land is systematic.”

The conclusion is ineluctable: “The evidence shows that the
commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years,
and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the
entire Sudan state apparatus.”

In response to such violence—as well as the failure of the
international community to provide security for Darfuri civilians, and
the monumental failure of the “Darfur Peace Agreement” (May 2006;
Abuja, Nigeria)—Darfuri rebel groups have become a huge part of the
security problem in Darfur. Some, it must be noted, are much more
culpable than others: there is little in common between the remaining
vicious forces of Minni Minawi’s “Sudan Liberation Army” (the sole
signatory to the DPA) and those of SLA-Unity, certainly insofar as
Suleiman Jamous has a voice in the policy and actions of the movement.
But the fractious nature of the rebel groups may have become
insurmountable—the real legacy of Abuja.

Even so, it is a travesty to suggest, as Alex de Waal recently has,
that “it is hard to make a moral distinction between the sides
[Khartoum and the rebels]” (BBC “Viewpoint,” May 21, 2008).
Indeed, it is difficult not to see de Waal’s absurd claim as a
continuing and perversely stubborn defense of his role in the Abuja
peace process, which has apparently fatally compromised any chance for a
real peace process. For having secured all it wanted in Abuja, Khartoum
now declares it will negotiate on no basis other than the hopelessly
flawed Abuja accord. For their part, once betrayed, the rebel groups
flatly reject the “Darfur Peace Agreement” as a starting point for a
new agreement.

There is of course no peace to keep in Darfur, and no prospect for
meaningful peace negotiations. And the rebels bear tremendous
responsibility. But it is extraordinarily disingenuous for de Waal to
write an article entitled “Why Darfur Intervention Is a Mistake” and
make no mention of the primary argument for the actual and indeed only
conceivable “intervention”—that of UNAMID. The mission has a
mandate, with UN Chapter VII authority, to protect humanitarian
operations that are presently on the verge of collapse or withdrawal.
These are the very operations that de Waal credits for dramatically
reducing mortality rates in Darfur. But of course nothing could be
clearer than if there is no more robust intervention by the
UN-sanctioned operation, security will continue to deteriorate, and it
is only a matter of time before it will be impossible to “keep that
aid effort going,” as de Waal enjoins.

De Waal is joined by his frequent co-author Julie Flint in this refusal
to acknowledge that whatever the limitations of the present UNAMID, the
force must either be made to work or humanitarian operations will cease
and hundreds of thousands of civilians will die—many very soon because
of rising malnutrition. Flint unleashes a tendentious tirade against
the human rights, policy, and advocacy organizations that have pushed
hard for a UN force to protect civilians and humanitarians in Darfur.
She also indulges the truism that there is “no peace to keep” in
Darfur (the title of her May 23, 2008 article in The Guardian
[on-line]). No one can argue with this, which suggests just how
valuable a statement it is. Nor would anyone disagree with the
proposition that the key to Darfur’s future is a credible, good-faith
peace process with effective international mediation.

But nowhere in her account of what UNAMID should become does Flint
mention the critical need to protect WFP food supply corridors,
humanitarian operations, and humanitarian workers. Flint glibly speaks
of the peace talks that will take place “once the immediate danger of
conflagration is past.” But nowhere does she acknowledge that dangers
in Darfur are poised to explode, and that the primary danger is a lack
of effective, mobile, aggressive protection of humanitarian operations,
corridors, and personnel. Camps housing some 2.6 million displaced
people are tinderboxes of rage and despair; without effective UNAMID
policing, and secure access for humanitarians, they will explode. The
grim truth is that after five years, it is all too clear that Darfur
makes nonsense of such a phrase as “once the immediate danger of
conflagration is past.”

Do we care enough to avert impending large-scale starvation in Darfur?
Is there a willingness to demand of Khartoum the freedom to collect and
disseminate data bearing on malnutrition in an effort to target food
resources most effectively? Will WFP be able to provide people with
more than half the food they require to live? Will 2.5 million
conflict-affected persons regain secure humanitarian access? Will
Khartoum’s vicious harassment and intimidation of humanitarian workers
be halted?

The questions have been clear for months; sadly, so too have the
answers.

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org