Darfur

Early signs of trouble in camps of Darfur
By Lynsey Addario and Lydia Polgreen
Published: March 23, 2009

NYALA, Sudan: The sign outside the clinic in Otash camp reads "8-hour service daily."
On Friday, Haider Ismael al-Amin lay in his mother's arms, his 10-year-old body withered and weak from dehydration after a night of vomiting. But the door to the clinic was locked. After 30 minutes of waiting, his family gave up.
"The white people used to come every day," said Hawa Hamal Mohammed, a relative of the boy. "Now the clinic is closed."
The American aid group that operated the clinic, the International Rescue Committee, was one of more than a dozen aid groups expelled from Darfur this month by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. He accused them of cooperating with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which had issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes in the conflict that has consumed Darfur for years.
Since then, local health workers have been struggling, with almost no medicine, to keep the clinic open on a limited basis. Thousands of people depend on it for primary care.
But on Friday it was closed altogether.
The expulsion of organizations that provided clean water, medical treatment, food and shelter for millions of Sudanese in the war-racked region of Darfur has thrown the world's largest aid operation into disarray, putting the lives of millions of displaced people at risk.
The Sudanese government has pledged that local aid groups and government agencies will fill the gap, and that assistance from the World Food Program and other United Nations agencies still operating in Darfur will help avert an immediate crisis of widespread water and food shortages.
But the enormous aid effort in Darfur, which costs more than $1 billion a year and requires more than 10,000 workers from dozens of organizations, is already slowing, aid officials here say.
Although no one yet knows how the remaining organizations will cope with the gargantuan task of keeping the most destitute alive, the levels of disease and misery in the vast camps where people who fled their homes in the conflict live are all but certain to rise. Already the most vulnerable, the oldest and youngest, are succumbing.
At the edge of Otash camp, a collection of some 30,000 people in South Darfur, the male relatives of Asha Adam dug her tiny grave. The infant girl died after suffering uncontrollable diarrhea, her family said. Such illnesses have become common, as water has become scarce in the camp and living conditions deteriorate, according to residents. The girl's father, Ahmed Abdul Majid, 55, said he had nine children.
In some highly politicized camps, residents are protesting the government's actions by refusing to accept help from organizations other than the ones that were expelled, aid workers and government officials say. Kalma, one of the biggest and oldest camps, with about 90,000 people, has been off limits to journalists for weeks, but Sudanese aid workers there have said that a tense standoff is brewing.
The water pumps in the camp require fuel, and the fuel is almost gone. United Nations and government officials have nearly 50 barrels of fuel, along with other supplies, ready to be delivered, but the residents have refused. Four people have been reported dead in a meningitis outbreak, but camp leaders have barred government health workers from going into the camp to vaccinate, aid workers said.
Al-Hadi Ahmed al-Najim, the government's humanitarian coordinator in South Darfur, said that Kalma residents had refused all efforts for help.
"Kalma is an international red card over our government's head," he said. "It is to be made clear that this is an irreversible decision. If they want facilities, we are ready to facilitate that. If they refuse, we are not going to enter by force."
The United Nations has tried to fill the gap left by the departure of organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières, which had to abandon hospitals and clinics in several hard-hit areas, and Oxfam Great Britain, which provided clean water and latrines to hundreds of thousands of people in camps across the region. Without these essential services, it will be virtually impossible to control waterborne infectious diseases, like cholera and meningitis, that often arrive with the rains, which are likely to begin in a few weeks.
But United Nations agencies like the World Food Program and Unicef relied heavily on private aid groups to carry out their programs, and while many aid groups remain in Darfur, the loss of some of the biggest has made that work increasingly difficult, aid officials said.
"We may not have an immediate crisis on our hands," said one senior aid official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of operations in Darfur. "But in a few weeks, when the rains start and the hungry season begins, that is when the real impact of this decision will be felt."

Feeding centers for malnourished children were already seeing hundreds of patients a week, and those numbers normally quadruple in the lean season before the harvest. Without organizations that run the specialized clinics that feed underweight and malnourished children with fortified porridge, more children will surely die, aid workers in Darfur said.
The decision to expel the aid groups appears to have been made well before the International Criminal Court announcement, and it was carried out with ruthless efficiency, aid groups said. Government forces arrived at the offices of several charities and ordered workers to leave, and then the forces seized valuable equipment like computers, cars and generators, according to aid officials here.
"This was in the works for a long time," one senior aid official involved in Darfur relief said. "They had been waiting for a chance to strike out at these organizations."
At the United Nations, Sudan has faced intense pressure from Western countries to allow the aid organizations to resume their work. But Sudanese officials are adamant that there will be no change.
"The decision of the government of Sudan is a legitimate sovereign decision which we will never reverse, and this should not be an issue for discussion," Mohamed Yousif Ibrahim Abdelmannan, Sudan's envoy to the United Nations, told the Security Council last week.
Lynsey Addario reported from Nyala, and Lydia Polgreen from Dakar, Senegal.
asmara (GMT+04:00) - 23/03/09


ASMARA
البشير ينهي زيارته لأسمرة بجبهة ضد "دول البغي والعدوان"

استقبال حاشد للبشير في أسمرة
دبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة (CNN)-- عاد الرئيس السوداني عمر البشير مساء الاثنين إلى الخرطوم، بعد زيارة رسمية استغرقت عدة ساعات إلى اريتريا تمثل أول جولة دولية له منذ صدور مذكرة التوقيف بحقه من المحكمة الجنائية الدولية على خلفية جرائم وقعت بإقليم دارفور.
وقال وزير الخارجية السوداني، دينق الور، في تصريحات صحفية بمطار الخرطوم، إن زيارة البشير جاءت تلبية لدعوة من نظيره الاريتري أسياس أفورقي، مشيراً إلى أن "الحشود الجماهيرية التي استقبلت الرئيس البشير في اسمرا كانت تعبر بصدق عن تضامن اريتريا حكومة وشعبا مع السودان ضد قرار المحكمة الجنائية الدولية."
من جانبه أشار محجوب فضل بدري، السكرتير الصحفي للبشير، إلى أن الزيارة "كانت فرصة لتكوين جبهة عريضة لمناهضة دول البغي والعدوان والمنظمات الدولية المشبوهة التي تسعي لتجريم السودان،" لافتاً إلى أن أفورقي "أعلن وقوف بلاده حكومة وشعبا إلى جانب السودان ضد مزاعم المحكمة الجنائية الدولية."
وأضاف أن البشير: "ثمّن الموقف الاريتري وطالب بضرورة فتح الحدود بين السودان واريتريا حتى يتمكن مواطنو البلدين من التنقل بواسطة البطاقة الشخصية باعتبار أن منطقة القرن الأفريقي منطقة تجارية فضلا عن أنها منطقة ترابط بين الشعوب." وفقاً لوكالة الأنباء السودانية.
وكان الرئيس السوداني قد وصل إلى العاصمة الاريترية، أسمرة، صباح الاثنين في زيارة خارجية هي الأولى منذ إصدار المحكمة الجنائية الدولية مذكرة اعتقال بحقه بدعوى ارتكاب جرائم حرب وجرائم ضد الإنسانية في دارفور.
وجاءت زيارة البشير بعد قليل من إصدار هيئة علماء السودان، فتوى تدعو البشير إلى عدم السفر إلى الدوحة للمشاركة في القمة العربية التي تستضيفها العاصمة القطرية في نهاية الشهر الجاري، كما تلي تشديد مدعي عام المحكمة الجنائية الدولية، لويس أوكامبو، بأن البشير عرضة للاعتقال بمجرد خروجه من الأراضي السودانية.

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