Despite appeals, chaos still stalks the Sudanese
By MARC LACEY, The New York Times
July 18, 2004
NYALA, Sudan, July 14 — Two weeks after Colin L. Powell and Kofi Annan visited this region in hopes that the glare of diplomatic shame might arrest a humanitarian crisis, conditions in Western Sudan have grown even worse.
Scarcely had the American secretary of state and the United Nations secretary general ended their tour, witnesses said, when, on July 8, gunmen stormed a girls school in the desert region of Darfur, chained a group of students together and set the building on fire. The charred remains of eight young victims were still in shackles when African Union military observers arrived on the scene.
That attack at the girls’ school was evidence that the sort of violence being waged by Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, on the black African population of this desert region is continuing even after the Sudanese government dispatched soldiers and police officers to the region.
On the heels of killings like these, however, there is now sickness and starvation and such a threat of epidemic in the region that disease could end up causing more deaths than the months of violence.
In the case of disease, the victims go more slowly. Most are like the two children whose hearts recently stopped beating as Dr. Jerry S. Ehrlich held them in his arms. Both were chronically malnourished, sapped of their strength over time.
“We’re trying to save as many kids as we can,” said Dr. Ehrlich, a New Jersey pediatrician working for Doctors Without Borders at the sprawling Kalma camp outside Nyala. He sat on a straw mat in front of a long line of mothers, each of whom cradled a malnourished baby in her arms.
Nobody knows how many bodies have been buried beneath Darfur’s hard earth since violence broke out here in early 2003. Estimates of the deaths begin at 30,000 and go up. In recent weeks, though, graves are being dug faster than ever, relief workers say, with disease now proving deadlier than the marauding men with guns.
The government pledged to Mr. Powell and Mr. Annan that they would disarm the Janjaweed and bring some modicum of security back to Darfur. But controlling the guns has proven nettlesome.
In Nyala, the capital of one of the three states in Darfur affected by the violence, government officials said they now control a 25-mile radius outside of town. Soon, the security zone will increase to 60 miles, officials said, which is still a tiny portion in a region the size of France.
“Colin Powell is asking us to collect the arms in Darfur in five days,” Ahmed Bilal Osman, Sudan’s health minister, said during a tour of Darfur this week. “Let me ask him: the U.S.A. in Iraq, they are a superpower – can they collect the arms in Falluja?”
On this reporter’s third visit since April to government-held portions of Darfur, always in the presence of government officials, the signs of misery seemed more acute than ever and the camps had grown significantly larger as more villagers sought security in them.
There was a man writhing on the floor of the Nyala hospital with a gash in his bicep that he received during a militia attack several days earlier. There were skeletal babies, many of whom no longer had the energy to cry. One young boy with burn marks on his face, his arms and much of his body approached a visitor outside Nyala and asked for something to eat. He was burned, he said, when his village was set afire.
Most experts predict that the situation in Darfur will most certainly get much worse. The Agency for International Development has estimated a death toll of about 300,000 by year’s end, if the aid response is swift, and up to a million casualties should help be slow in coming. The World Health Organization’s estimates are lower, but it says there could be 10,000 deaths a month in Darfur if infectious diseases break out.
Insecurity still reigns in the countryside, say the aid workers who are fanning out across the region. The attack on the girls’ school took place after the dignitaries had gone.
“It reminded me of a scene from Rwanda,” said one official who saw photos of the attack, one of many attributed to the Janjaweed in recent weeks.
The conflict is a complex one, part land clash between farmers and herders, part rebel insurgency and part government military crackdown. Islam is the religion of most people in the region but the Arab militias seem to attack only black Africans.
The chaos began in early 2003 when two rebel groups launched attacks on the government. A cease-fire between the government and the rebels is now in effect but violations by both sides are reported regularly. Talks aimed at formally ending the conflict have gone nowhere.
The Bush administration has been pushing a resolution in the United Nations Security Council that would impose sanctions on some leaders of the militias. Americans officials have also been pressing hard for continued negotiations between the rebels and the Sudan government.
Sudanese officials vehemently oppose the United Nations resolution and say they are already making headway in detaining outlaws in the region. As for the school attack, officials said they are investigating.
“We will follow up on that to find the culprits,” said Muhammad Yusef, state minister for humanitarian affairs in Nyala. “They will be brought to justice.”
But there is nobody to arrest when it comes to disease.
Small children are the first to die in a health crisis like the one unfolding here. Diarrhea and dysentery weaken them. Their kidneys eventually stop functioning. Then their hearts begin failing too. Over time, they become so debilitated that their immune systems no longer protect them from the many germs that fill the air in the crowded camps that so many villagers now call home.
Feeding centers for starving children have been set up across the region and hundreds of babies arrive every week, cradled by their desperate mothers. The children are weighed and measured. Only the skinniest and sickest are allowed in.
Until recently, Darfur’s hospitals had been turning away those unable to pay for their services. The government has now eliminated the fees, using donor funds.
The health situation is similarly dire across the border in Chad, where several hundred thousand villagers have fled.
A survey conducted in June of 896 children living in desert refugee camps and other settlements in Chad, near the border town of Tine, found that 27 percent of those in the camps and 29 percent of those living outside the camps were severely malnourished.
Tons of relief food are arriving at camps throughout Darfur but children continue to grow weaker. The lack of clean water is a prime culprit. Diarrhea is now rife in the camps, sapping whatever nourishments people have managed to take in.
“Diarrhea is a beastly killer of the weak,” said Dr. David Nabarro, who works for the World Health Organization.
Sanitation is another challenge. Latrines are in short supply in the camps. In all of Western Darfur, with a million people, there are about 4,000.
“That is minuscule,” said Ces Adorna, Unicef’s representative in Sudan, standing in a Nyala field covered with human excrement.
When camp dwellers relieve themselves in the open, diseases spread even quicker. When the rainy season begins in earnest, doctors fear outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and other diseases. Measles already flared up, killing many children, but doctors say a hastily put together immunization campaign seems to have contained the outbreak.
In overcrowded camps, “it’s like sitting on a bomb,” said Dr. Nevio Zagaria, who works for the W.H.O. in Nyala.
The rains will also bring a spike in malaria, a major killer in this part of the world. Crews have begun moving from shelter to shelter in Darfur’s camps spraying for mosquitoes. Mosquito nets are being flown in by the planeload, and antimalarial drugs are being stockpiled.
Mr. Osman, the health minister, scoffs at suggestions that his government created the crisis. While accompanying Dr. Lee Jong Wook, director general of W.H.O., on a tour of Darfur this week, Mr. Osman disavowed any connection between the Janjaweed and the government and blamed rebels for the crisis. That has been a government refrain, although it is one that has been discounted by outside governments and relief workers who have investigated the Darfur crisis.
Mr. Osman said he feared that talk about ethnic cleansing in Darfur from the Bush administration is designed to justify an American military invasion.
“They’re saying that so they can bring their troops in,” he said.
Mr. Osman said the health situation was grim throughout Sudan and that the people of Darfur were benefiting from all the clinics being set up since the crisis erupted.
“So far, there are no epidemics,” he said. “The situation is not all that bad when it comes to health.”