Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Death of “Ahmed” of Kassab Camp

The young boy from Kassab Camp is unnamed, unidentified except by the name of his camp. He drowned last week, and notice came only in the form of a brief announcement from Radio Dabanga, which has sources throughout Darfur:


A boy died by drowning in Kassab Camp in North Darfur on Saturday. Several houses collapsed in the camp after heavy rains that fell on the region. A source said that dozens of displaced families are in the open after the loss of their homes.”

Without this notice from one of the world’s more obscure news sources, the boy’s anonymity would have been complete—joining the hundreds of thousands who have perished in similar anonymity over the past eight years. And perhaps I should be more concerned about the “dozens of displaced families”—potentially hundreds of civilians—exposed in North Darfur during the very height of the rainy season, facing ominously high malnutrition rates. But there are times when I find the world’s inability to look with any particularity at the human suffering and destruction in Darfur a cause for rage, for a desperate urge to make this suffering and destruction into a recognizable, an undeniable, an inescapably disturbing portrait. So I will construct an all too plausible history for this boy from Kassab Camp, and his place in Darfur’s ongoing agony. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1 comment:

Unknown said...

We usually don't here news in Darfur about people dying of weather so much, but families are still being torn apart in Darfur every day. I’ve heard Uwe Boll’s new film Attack on Darfur brings these horrors to light, it's gonna be as realistic as possible, even some of the actors are real life Drafur victims.