Powell sees “show” camp in Sudan’s Darfur

By Saul Hudson

ABU SHOUK CAMP, Sudan, June 30 (Reuters) – The sky was overcast — an ominous sign the deadly rainy season is creeping into Sudan’s Darfur region.

A sandstorm blew at the edges of the camp that houses 40,000 people driven from their villages by marauding Arab militia.

But on Wednesday, the Abu Shouk camp was not a picture that reflected the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, where 2 million people are caught up in fighting.

Instead, the Sudanese government presented what one aid worker called a “show camp” to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who attempted to see first hand what he says approaches genocide.

Thousands in the camp swarmed round the top U.S. diplomat, cheering and clapping their hands above their heads.

With women wearing bright orange, green or red shawls and headscarves, men in white turbans and tunics, and children in football shirts, crowds raced energetically through the dusty camp following Powell on his 20-minute walkabout.

The raucous crowd rushed through the sprawling camp, past rows of light-green coloured tents with blackened cooking pots outside. It coursed through a market area of the camp, where men sat offering onions and sugary tea under wooden shelters.

None were barefoot or showed obvious signs of malnutrition.

That contrasted with most camps across Darfur, the western region of Africa’s largest nation, where U.S. officials fear as many as 1 million people could die this year because of disease and starvation.

Powell, accompanied by top Sudanese officials, acknowledged the government might have staged Wednesday’s event, but said the aim of his visit was to demand the government disarm the militia rather than to find evidence to confirm the “horrific” crisis.

“Whether all of the folk in the camp live in that camp, or some of them came in for the day, is not really relevant. Camps are not the solution,” he told reporters after the tour.

“It’s a show camp. It’s the best I’ve seen,” said one aid worker, who asked not to be named.

One million Darfuris have fled their homes in the past 18 months because of the conflict in the arid region between the Janjaweed, the government and two rebel groups who say they are acting to protect the villagers.

The Janjaweed are Arab militias who have driven black African villagers off the land in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killings, pillaging and rape which human rights groups say is verging on genocide.

Relief organizations are racing to take food and medicine to camps for displaced people before the imminent rainy season cuts off vast parts of the region.

Sudan’s presentation of the Abu Shouk camp apparently fit with the government’s strategy of downplaying a crisis that has prompted Powell and Secretary General Kofi Annan for U.N. Security Council action. The government defies aid organization assessments and denies there is famine or epidemics in Darfur.

A 20-year-old woman who gave her name only as Maghas said she came to the camp after the Janjaweed cut her father’s throat, and was now a victim of the government’s refusal to recognise the truth.

She ran her hand across her neck and said, “The government said it didn’t happen.”