A Tragedy Without End

The deteriorating security situation and Khartoum’s intransigence are sustaining genocide by attrition in Darfur

By Eric Reeves

Almost incomprehensibly, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur continues to deepen, threatening the lives of more than 4.5 million people now characterized by the UN as “conflict-affected.” Security throughout the humanitarian theater, including much of eastern Chad, is deteriorating badly. Acutely vulnerable aid operations now operate amidst intolerable levels of danger, even as these operations alone can avert cataclysmic human destruction within populations terribly weakened by four years of genocidal counter-insurgency warfare. Hundreds of thousands of civilians will die if there is no significant improvement in current security conditions.

More than 1 million human beings have no access to basic humanitarian assistance---food, primary medical care, and provision of clean water. Oxfam International reported in late December that more than a third of Darfur’s conflict-affected population was “effectively out of bounds to aid agencies.” This grim news came as UNICEF reported that nutritional studies revealed “over 70% of the population is experiencing food insecurity”; localized studies found acute malnutrition affecting 20% of children under five. The mortality rate within this most vulnerable population is certainly very high wherever humanitarian assistance is unavailable.

There were eight emergency evacuations of threatened humanitarian workers in December alone, involving 400 personnel at various locations throughout Darfur. The same number of personnel were evacuated from aid operations in eastern Chad, the scene of rapidly accelerating ethnic violence, most of it by Khartoum’s Janjaweed militia proxies or Chadian rebel groups supported by the National Islamic Front regime. Read more >>>