They need the world to pay attention : Darfur runs the risk of mass starvation

By Philip Mascoll, Staff Reporter.

TORONTO, Aug 4 (The Toronto Star) — The situation in northwest Sudan is spiralling out of control and more than a million people face starvation if Canada and the rest of the world continue to ignore the crisis, says a Canadian just back from the Darfur region.

Murder, rape and pillage are so prevalent that those in Darfur, in the west of Sudan, have been unable to plant crops this year, says Steve Matthews, emergency response communications manager for World Vision International.

“What they need most is peace and for the world to pay attention,” says 46-year-old Matthews in a telephone interview from his London, Ont., home after returning from a month in Darfur.

Arab militias called Janjaweed have terrorized the region’s black African villages since last year.

The United Nations, which has accused Sudan of using Janjaweed as a tool against rebels, says the marauders have killed 30,000 and driven 1 million people from their homes in what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“They need food and non-food items for a year to 18 months,” Matthews said.

“This year’s harvest should have been planted in April (but) people could not go into the fields for fear of rape, pillage and plunder.

“But without the crops, a million to one-and-a-half-million people will starve.

“They need long term attention from external sources … The more people that know, the more governments and agencies that will pay attention.”

While in Darfur, Matthews, a former newspaper journalist, spoke to a young mother, 23-year-old Mona Kheder.

The Janjaweed – which translates as the men on horses with guns – murdered her husband, relatives and fellow villagers and robbed them of cattle and food, she told him in a refugee camp in Nyala, in south Darfur.

“It was six o’clock in the morning when my husband was shot and killed by the Janjaweed,” she told Matthews.

“We were sleeping when we heard … guns. My husband got up and ran to the door to see what was happening. A man on a horse shot him and he died at our front door.”

The marauders killed a total of 54 people before her village, Himeda, was torched to the ground, she told Matthews.

Her husband, Ahmed Mussa Ibrahim, 25, was a simple farmer with a worldly wealth of three cows, a small plot of land to grow vegetables and a grass hut.

Mona hid under their bed with her two sons after Ahmed was shot at the door.

As the villagers’ 300 cows were being herded away by Janjaweed, she ran with her sons into the bush where they hid with other women and children.

The next day they began the 60-kilometre walk to Nyala.

Mona and her two young sons, Mobark and Musap, now live in the skeleton of a makeshift hut, with only a few plastic bags protecting them from the elements.

They are among the lost and frightened in the overcrowded, underserviced camp known as Kalma, Matthews said.

Yesterday, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Sudan to comply with a U.N. resolution threatening sanctions and said he believed the government was getting the message “loud and clear,” reported.

The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution last Friday giving Sudan 30 days to disarm and prosecute marauding militia in Darfur or it would consider unspecified sanctions against the government.

Among other steps announced, Sudan intends to increase the number of police in Darfur to 6,000 from 5,000 and deploy more troops.

Matthews arrived in London last weekend to be with his children before they return to school, but may go back to Darfur in September.