Crisis in western Sudan deepens

Despite recent pledges by the Sudanese government of President Omar el-Bashir to address the acute humanitarian crisis and the ongoing militia attacks on Black African civilians in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where thousands have been killed and over a million have fled attacks by government-backed militiamen, few changes have been observed on the ground.

Describing people living in “sub-human standards” in Darfur, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said the continuing crisis was “one of the biggest logistical nightmares in the history of humanitarian crises.”

The UN said last week that there were still “colossal gaps” in humanitarian assistance. Significant areas had never received any aid at all, 17 months into the conflict, and many of them happen to be located within rebel-held areas in the north – especially around Tine, Karnoi, and Jabal Marrah, north of Al-Halluf.

By October, about 2 million people could be in need of food aid, while malnutrition rates are increasingly on the rise. Acute malnutrition now ranges from over 12 percent to 39 percent in the conflict-affected areas, the UN said.

Meanwhile, security on the ground has hardly improved. Attacks by the predominantly Arab, government-backed militiamen, known as Janjaweed, continue.

“There has been no improvement in security,” commented one aid worker.

In a related development, the African Union said July 6 that it would send 300 peacekeepers to the Darfur region to help preserve order.

Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent expressions of concern about the crisis in Sudan, the Bush administration has nonetheless certified that the ruling regime in Khartoum, the nation’s capital, is acting in good faith, according to a recent article in the Black Commentator. U.S. interests are primarily driven by a desire to control the oil reserves in the petroleum-rich Abyei region in the nation’s south, the article says, and the Bush administration is prepared to look the other way as genocide against Black Africans continues to unfold.