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RI in the News - Dispatches: Two months in Darfur

11/16/2004

Two Months in Darfur

In "Two Months in Darfur," Jennifer Abrahamson of slate.com sends dispatches from the field describing the conflict in Darfur.
From: Jennifer Abrahamson
Subject: Disappearing Act
Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004, at 12:29 PM PT

"FIREASH, North Darfur—The U.N. Land Cruiser carried us south out of town in search of the 3,000 missing people of Bi Sharia. We ended up finding eight or nine of them and considered ourselves lucky.

Soon after leaving El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur where the first major Sudanese Liberation Army assault was launched against the military in April 2003, we approached an empty expanse of rust-colored earth. Small lumps of ashen charcoal were the only sign that thousands of civilians had lived there in a makeshift camp after fleeing violence in their home villages. They hadn't lived there long.
Beginning in late August, an explosion of attacks carried out by the government-supported Arab Janjaweed militias—and in at least one case, by the military itself—surged through several African Muslim villages southeast of El Fasher. This, despite a highly publicized mission in Darfur that week, in which the government tried to prove to the United Nations and ultimately, the Security Council in New York, that it was reining in the murderous militias and improving civilian protection.

...

The Washington, D.C., rights group Refugees International, whose researchers I met while in Darfur, last week warned that the government is continuing to forcibly relocate thousands of IDPs, despite the agreement it signed in late August assuring the 'voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable' return of the homeless to their villages in Darfur. Khartoum is systematically flying in the face of international law."

Read the entire article at slate.com.