First Letter from Darfur,
Nyala, South Darfur – 1 September 2006
I have been in Darfur now
for nearly a month. I should have written sooner, but somehow the days pass
quickly and it is now 1 September. Today is Friday – the weekend -- to the
extent that we take weekends in the field. But I have determined to make time
to write a letter. When I send it will
depend on when we have Internet access, which is intermittent here. It’s hot –
in the mid 30s I’d guess – but not unbearably so, as this is the rainy season
and it cools off in the evenings.
This afternoon, if security permits, some of our Joint
Assessment (JAM) people – me among them - will be going to Kalma Camp, an IDP
(internally displaced persons) camp which used to be the largest in Darfur, with over 100,000 people. Now, it is the second
largest, as Gereida, south of Nyala, has surpassed 120,000. I know that all of
these names mean little to you – they meant nothing to me before my arrival. It
is as steep learning curve.
“If security permits”
derives from the fact that the UN Security Council yesterday passed a
resolution to send a peacekeeping mission (17,000 troops and 3,000 police) into
Darfur, if the Sudan Government consents to
their deployment. Thus far, the answer of President Bashir has been to organize
demonstrations in Khartoum and across Darfur saying “NO to Foreign Troops.” In Nyala, there was a student march on
Wednesday – 10,000 – to deliver a petition to the UNMIS mission. I am told it
was orderly. I was actually in El Geneine, in West Darfur,
at the time. But, today, at prayers in the mosques – sometime around noon – the
word of the SC Resolution will be spread and we have, consequently, been placed
on security alert with movement restricted to that which is essential. Whether
or not they will permit us to go to Kalma, therefore, is unclear.
Kalma Camp, just a few kilometers outside of Nyala, has been
a tense place. Last month, there were reports of large numbers of women
(perhaps as many as 200) being raped when they were out collecting firewood, in
some cases organized “mass” rapes. AMIS (the African Union Mission in Sudan – a
force of 7000, highly underfunded – in
fact, out of money at this point in time -- completely inadequate to cover
Darfur -- an area the size of France though with a population of only 6 million)
had stopped the firewood patrols that used to accompany the women when they
left the camp, putting them at the mercy of the armed camel militia (the
Janjaweed) that roam the area with impunity. The firewood is collected not only
for cooking, but to generate some income for the women who sell it or make
charcoal from it – the only income most of the women have to supplement the
relief food that they receive. The youth in the camps – and there are large
number of boys and young men in the camps with nothing to do -- have become
militant and formed themselves into vigilante parties, as the Government of
Sudan (GoS) police are not allowed in many of the camps and violence has
escalated as the camps have become awash with arms.
The situation here in Darfur – and in Sudan more
generally – is highly complex and I have only a very superficial knowledge of
it. What am I doing here? The Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) which was signed in
May – but which has only been accepted by two of the four main protagonists in
this conflict – called for a Joint Assessment Mission to develop an Early
Recovery Program (ERC) for Darfur. The JAM has
6 main clusters – with a few experts on each, working on “Peace and Security,”
“Governance and Capacity
Building,” “Basic Social
Services,” “War Affected Communities – Livelihood Activities,” “Rule of Law”
and “Returns.” Then there are “cross-cutting issues” – that affect all of the
clusters – Gender, Reconciliation and Protection. I am doing the “Protection”
dimension – to ensure that all of the 6 clusters take into account the need to
protect civilians in the conflict and the human rights of all Darfurians in the
peace. The problem is that there is no peace in Darfur.
And since the signing of the DPA, there has been more, rather than less,
violence. The opposition has fragmented further and the Government, with
support from one SLA (Sudanese Liberation
Army) faction – led by Mini Minawi and supported by armed militia (including
the Janjaweed, the armed nomads) has been trying to consolidate or extend its
areas of control – causing more displacement. This week, there were attacks on a number of
villages south of Buram in south Darfur,
creating another 10,000 IDPs in that region. In North
Darfur, the situation is very tense as the Government has sent in
large number of troops to head off a feared attack on El Fashir (the capital of
that province) and to drive the National Redemption Front (NRF) out of a number of areas that they
occupy.
There have been a number of attacks on NGOs. Three cars of
ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) were hi-jacked about 10 days
ago and two days ago ICRC found out that they killed the driver that they had
abducted with the vehicles. So ICRC has pulled back all their staff in North Darfur to El Fashir.
All this being said, when I read the statement of Jan
Egeland – UN Emergency Relief Coordinator warning that “if the humanitarian
operation were to collapse, we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths” and
that the fighting between Government forces and the rebels who did not sign the
DPA “has resulted in hundreds of deaths, despicable gender based violence,
systematic looting and an estimated 50,000 displaced in the last 8 weeks,” it
sounds a bit surreal because it is not the way it feels on the ground. Which is
not to say that it is not correct; it just doesn’t feel that I am in the middle
of a war scenario of that magnitude.
Since coming here, I have been based in Nyala and have, thus
far, made trips to Kabum and Kass (in south Darfur), to El Fashir in north Darfur, and to Geneina
in West Darfur – so to all three Darfurian provinces. The biggest challenge in
the south was the condition of the roads and the water filled wadis that we had
to cross. On the three (which became a four) day Kabum trip, with two
four-wheel drive jeeps – there were at least 20 occasions that we needed to use
the winch to get one car or the other out of mud. And there were places we
wanted to go to but couldn’t reach because of the flooding. We had to stay an
extra day because it took so long to cover the distance, given the condition of
the roads. When you talk of roads here, you stretch the language, because most
are just tracks across arid fields. How
the drivers know where to drive actually beats me as there are no sign posts
anywhere. From Geneina, we visited one IDP camp – Sisi – that was accessible
only by helicopter and was last visited by anyone from the international
community only in June. Indeed, many places are only accessible that way,
because of banditry on the roads. Most are classified D” – which means you can
only travel with armed escort, or where you can only travel in a convoy of 4
vehicles. That essentially means there are no-go areas because you cannot get
the escorts of vehicles. But all that being said, and despite visits now to
many IDP camps, it still doesn’t feel like a war zone.
On the personal level, the greatest hardship is the
absolutely miserable quality of Darfurian (I hesitate to generalize to all of Sudan)
food. People here eat breakfast, call “futur” at around 11 a.m. which consists
of “full” (which is largely red beans cooked with some meat) and almost
everything – lots of tough meat -- is fried in oil with little or no green or
fresh vegetables. There are a few restaurants in Nyala, one worse than the
other, but we are lucky by comparison with El Fashir, which has only “The Roast
House” (fried hamburgers, fried chicken, fried mutton), or Geneina – which has
no restaurants. There is actually one place in Nyala, the “Lebanese,” which
does serve a good salad and sometimes baba ganoush or humus. And there is one
“Indian” – a little far, as it is on the other side of the market -- which
sometime is OK. But, as I have gotten to know people here, I have had some
“home cooked” meals – you can buy pasta, and tinned tuna, and tinned mushrooms,
and in the market you can get tomatoes and eggplant. So some variety is
possible. At the Syrian grocery, you can sometimes get yoghurt and, if you want
to spend $10 a box, you can even buy corn flakes.
The accommodations are basic. A lumpy mattress. A fan in the
room (no aircon) if the generator is on, a cold shower, a toilet, in my guest
house, a real toilet – in most places a squat. The body is a creature of habit;
it took quite awhile till I taught it to pee from a squatting position. The
bladder kept saying – this is not the conditions under which I empty myself!! But,
you can teach an old dog new tricks – it is possible. For example, I no longer
flinch when I see cockroaches. That is just part of the landscape. The other
evening, I watched with fascination in our courtyard as a small rat attacked
and devoured a particularly large roach, maybe four inches long and a good two
inches wide.
And – you do learn new and fascinating things. For example,
in discussions with some blacksmiths in a village outside of Nyala, I learned
that a camel can do twice the work of a donkey, but it costs 10 times more to
feed a camel than to feed a donkey. Hence, in the 1990’s, the camel plough was
modified into a donkey plough with the donkeys now doing most of the field
work. I have also learned that the plants that look like small bulrushes are
millet, while sorgum is a large cluster of fat grains clumped together on the
stalk.
I have bought a few attractive mats and baskets here to
support IDP women (woven with orange and red dyed raffia), a donkey whip, and a
few handmade knives – but there is not much to buy. Jesse and Rox will be
relieved I think, though I am going to have to send what I bought home with
DHL, given how little luggage we are allowed. To Nyala, I was permitted 15
kilo, which meant I left one suitcase in Khartoum.
Another is in Geneva.
How long I will be here is not clear. The project is due to end by mid to end Septemebr
so I will probably be moving on by early October, if not sooner. But I need to
write my program folk in Geneva to see what is next in store.
While Internet is irregular here, it is always great to hear
from people, so do write.
With warmest regards,
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