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Darfur Food Rations Cut In Half

from the April 22, 2008 eNews issue
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Throughout the past year the humanitarian situation in the Darfur region of Sudan has continued to deteriorate. Furthermore, experts say it is likely to get worse. Full deployment of the much-touted UN peacekeeping force has been delayed until next year, according to recent Security Council reports, and food rations for the needy have been cut in half due to attacks on UN convoys. It has long been acknowledged that something should be done, yet despite the severity of the situation it seems very little progress has been made to stop the bloodshed and suffering.

Over the past five years hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur as a result of violence, disease, and malnutrition. The conflict began in February of 2003. In response to political unrest in the western region of Darfur, the Sudanese government mobilized an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed – which translated means "devils on horseback." The Janjaweed have been accused of burning villages, kidnapping children, contaminating water sources and systematically raping women as a form of ethnic cleansing.

Humanitarian agencies estimate that more than 300,000 people have died as a result of the conflict and 2.5 million have been forced to flee their homes. Approximately 260,000 refugees have fled the country and the rest have settled in camps throughout the region. Those in refugee camps still live in fear of the Janjaweed and are suffering from disease and starvation. Tens of thousands of people are without shelter or sanitation, receive no food aid, and have to drink contaminated water. Militiamen often attack anyone who ventures away from the refugee camps to search for food and water.

Sudan is on the US State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism. Sudan has given shelter to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, which used Sudan as its main operational and training base from 1991 to 1996. Since the September 11 attacks, international investigators suspect it has become a financial hub for al-Qaeda's terror network. Sudan has also harbored members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, and others. The National Islamic Front, the strict Islamist party that governs most of Sudan, does not consider any of these groups to be terrorist organizations.

It has been said that a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. However we serve a loving God who created us and knows us intimately. The very hairs on our heads are numbered. It is the same with each and every person in Sudan. God sees their pain and is grieved by it - as His children we should be grieved by it too.