Darfur Humanitarian Operations Now in "Meltdown" Phase

By: Eric Reeves

Relief work in Eastern Chad is also experiencing what UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres calls a “meltdown”; the international response continues to be a dilatory and disingenuous charade with Khartoum’s génocidaires about a “peacekeeping” force

The security crisis confronting humanitarian operations in Darfur and eastern Chad has deepened dangerously in the past several weeks. A new level of violence and brazen attacks on aid workers has produced large-scale evacuations of many hundreds of personnel, both Sudanese and expatriate. Complete lawlessness is rampant. Perhaps only half of Darfur has any humanitarian access, and much of this is highly compromised by the difficulty of overland transport.

Virtually the same conditions of extreme insecurity prevail in eastern Chad, where some 500,000 conflict-affected persons also face a severe attenuation of humanitarian access. A conflict-affected population of some 4.5 million human beings in the greater humanitarian theater has now been reduced to watching helplessly as aid operations---even the most critical---are suspended or halted altogether. A series of extended confidential conversations with senior officials, representing a range of humanitarian organizations on the ground in Darfur, makes clear that despite the courage and commitment that presently sustain relief efforts, the possibility of wholesale evacuations is perilously close.

If humanitarian organizations do withdraw entirely, or are continually more restricted in their movements, there will be no witnesses to the next act of genocidal destruction: the assault upon or bulldozing of Darfur’s camps for the displaced. Read more >>>