War and disease in Darfur

The story in Darfur just keeps getting worse. While there has been a peace pact signed — one that may or may not stop the killing — the Darfur region is now facing a major health crisis.

From The New York Times:

The brutal war in Darfur has set off what the United Nations has called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” a crucible of death that seems to grow grimmer despite a new peace agreement. But it is not bullets that kill most people here now. It is pneumonia borne on desert dust, diarrhea caused by dirty water, malaria carried by mosquitoes to straw huts with no nets.

At least 200,000 and perhaps as many as 450,000 have died as a direct result of the conflict in Darfur, according to estimates by international health and human rights organizations, though no one is sure how many of the deaths have come from combat and how many from the hunger and disease that have been caused or worsened by the war.

But these days, people mostly die because they cannot get health care, clean water or enough food.

Local and international aid organizations here are trying to stave off these deaths, but their ranks are shrinking. They take care of 2.5 million people driven from their homes and farms with a diminishing pool of money as donors, particularly in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, have not sent all the money they pledged to Darfur. Beyond that, they work under tight restrictions imposed by Sudanese officials and face attacks by combatants who hijack their vehicles and menace their workers.

The conditions are so dire that the effort faces a widespread collapse, Jan Egeland, the top United Nations aid official, told the Security Council this month.

This is harsh stuff and should be unacceptible. That we allow it, by our own inaction, even as we make grand claims for our actions in Iraq, cheapens our credibility even farther.

I am by no means advocating a unilateral military solution. The U.S. armed forces are stretched way too thin to take on a job like this — even if we were to pull our tropps from Iraq now. An international force operating under the mandate of the United Nations — provided the U.N. and its member nations are willing to call the Darfur genocide what it is — would be a better option, though I am not convinced, especially under a current atmosphere that uses the language of democracy and international law to mask what for most nations is really nothing more than national self-interest.

So what to do? First, I think we need to get aboard the divestment movement, which as The Nation points out, is starting to be felt in Sudan:

The Sudanese government is starting to feel the pressure from the divestment movement. It took out an estimated $1 million in ads in the New York Times in
March, and the Sudanese embassy recently published a press release decrying
divestment efforts. “The fact that the regime is responding so distinctly to the
movement means they certainly understand the implications,” says (Sudan expert Eric) Reeves.

And we can empower the International Criminal Court, which currently has little authority, though its impact is likely not to be felt for a long time. (It is truly criminal that the United States, which professes to act with the highest of motives, refuses participation.)

All of this seems so inadequate. But until there is an international consensus on the Darfur genocide — a consensus that can only be created by public attention and approbrium — I fear the situation will continue to fester, if not grow worse.

Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet