Crisis in Sudan’s Darfur deepens as new violence prevents food deliveries

By Sudarsan Raghavan, Knight Ridder Newspapers

EL FASHER, Sudan, Nov 22, 2004 (KRT) — Despite a truce and the presence of African peacekeepers, a recent surge in fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region has disrupted food deliveries, prompting aid workers to warn that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is worsening.

Sudan Liberation Army rebels speed through the desert east of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state November 8, 2004. (Reuters).

Some areas with heavy refugee populations have gone weeks without deliveries as roads open one day are declared unsafe the next. The number of kidnappings, land-mine explosions and random shootings has risen.

Meanwhile, large swaths of Darfur are still inaccessible to aid groups, leaving tens of thousands helpless. In northern Darfur, as many as 100,000 people in rebel-controlled areas are without food aid, say United Nations workers.

“We still have people we know are there and we can’t reach because of the insecurity,” said Janse Sorman, the head of the World Food Program in this northern Darfur town. “This is our greatest challenge.

On Saturday afternoon, Sorman, a tall, affable Swede, was in a monstrous warehouse with bags of food, mostly from the United States, piled to the ceiling. Outside, 30 trucks, each capable of carrying 10 tons, waited to go to the town of Tawila, nearly 40 miles away.

Then Sorman got the phone call he dreaded. Tawila is too tense, his security officer said. The delivery is postponed indefinitely.

“This happens almost once a week,” Sorman said, his face lined with frustration.

“It’s getting worse and worse. There’s more and more of these incidents.”

The 22-month civil war in Darfur, which pits black African rebels against Arab militiamen backed by the government, has killed about 70,000 people and displaced 1.6 million.

U.N. workers say it’s the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and that it will only get worse.

Violence not only has disrupted food deliveries, but also has discouraged planting amid an already dismal landscape of drought and desertification. A meager harvest is expected as the Arab Janjaweed militias have driven thousands of black African farmers off their lands. Those able to plant have seen crops wither due to meager rainfall. Production of staples such as sorghum and millet are down by as much as half of normal levels.

“The crisis is not over,” said Edouard Rodier, a program coordinator for Action Against Hunger, a relief agency in northern Darfur. “There is a major crops failure.”

The Janjaweed also have looted tools, poisoned wells and stolen thousands of livestock vital for farming. Experts say the region is facing “a seed famine” from the looting of seed stores, the Janjaweed’s razing of fields in 2003, and the fact that less than half of all farming land in Darfur was cultivated this year.

“The food security will not improve, even with a good scenario, until 2006,” predicted Bir Chandra Mandal, an emergency coordinator for the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization in the southern Darfur town of Nyala. He added that some of the conditions resemble those before Ethiopia’s 1984 famine.

By the middle of next year, the number of refugees needing food aid could reach 2.8 million, said Carlos Veloso, the World Food Program’s emergency coordinator for Darfur. The figure was based on a recent survey conducted by U.S. and U.N. agencies.

For next year’s harvest to improve, farmers would need to return to their fields in the next three or four months, aid workers say. But as long as the instability persists, farmers aren’t likely to leave refugee camps and tens of thousands more could head to the crowded camps in search of food.

The violence is getting worse. In recent weeks, the rebel Sudan Liberation Army has stepped up attacks, and the Janjaweed and Sudanese have retaliated. Both sides blame the other for the escalation.

An incident in the hamlet of Zalingei in western Darfur last week illustrates the problem. On Friday, the Janjaweed took scores of refugees foraging for wild grains and firewood outside the camp hostage for five hours. Many were tied up and beaten, said Eigil Kvernmo, a relief worker for the International Rescue Committee.

That attack was apparently in retaliation for the abduction of a group of Arabs by the rebels last month. Since the kidnapping, tensions have soared and the United Nations was forced to pull out its international staff for 10 days and stop the delivery of food aid.

On Saturday, however, things were quiet and Zalingei received its first delivery of food aid in seven weeks. The desperate waited in long lines in the morning sun for dusty bags of grains they thought would never arrive.

“Thank you for the mercy of the white man,” Kaltooma Adam, 60, a small woman with a gaunt, leathery face told a visiting delegation of U.S. and U.N. aid officials. “The white man here is powerful.”

Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to the World Food Program and other U.N. agencies who was in Darfur on a two-day mission to assess conditions, said he doubted the situation would improve soon. “We’re going to be here a while, at least another 13 or 14 months,” he said.