Darfur Photo Essay: Rebels and Refugees
Daniel Pepper
Daniel Pepper's work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and Mother Jones, among other publications. See www.danielpepper.com.
March 30, 2006
El Geneina is a dusty frontier town on the edge of Western Darfur, about thirty kilometers from the border with Chad, Sudan’s weaker, poorer, and increasingly unstable neighbor. There is only one spot of pavement in the town, a couple square meters of blacktop reserved for the Sudanese military’s three massive Russian Mi-24 attack helicopters.
The helicopters cut through the desert landscape in El Geneina, where donkey carts and men on horseback far outnumber motorized vehicles. You might not think a place like this–one of the most landlocked spots in Africa–would also be one of the continent’s most diverse. But each day dozens of peacekeepers from Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya and South Africa, aid workers from American and Europe, contractors from China, and native Sudanese fly in and out rickety turboprops flown by Russian pilots.
In the past few months a new group of international visitors has come to town: heavily armed rebels from Chad.
“Chad is a sister state to Darfur.” Says Dr. Eltayeb Hag Ateya, the director of the Center for Conflict Research at the University of Khartoum. “You cannot do anything in Darfur without thinking of Chad. All the presidents of Chad are either installed by or forced out by forces that have come from Darfur.”
Eight to nine thousand Chadian rebels, mostly army defectors, have arrived in wide swath of Western Darfur, given over to them by the central government in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. There they are training, planning, and coordinating their takedown of the government of Chadian President Idriss Deby.
In contrast to the Sudanese rebel groups in Darfur, the Chadians are equipped with new cars, equipment, and heavy artillery weapons. They are a formidable fighting force and pose a real threat to civilians on both sides of the border.
Many of these rebels’ children, wives, and parents live apart from them, a short drive from El Geneina. (The rebels' camps are quite a few hours outside of town, across punishing terrain.) For fear these refugees might pass along any supplies to their armed relatives, organizations like the U.N.’s refugee body, UNHCR, have so far held back from providing them with aid, leaving the task to groups like Catholic Relief Services.
Khalia Daoud is one of the recent arrivals, living in a small straw hut, box-like, lined up with others like it in neat rows. Inside her home there is a bowl, a mat, a few pieces of cloth--nothing more. She squats in the shade of her straw hut, which provides little protection from the desert’s chilly nighttime winds.
A mother of six, Khalia fled from Chad to Darfur more than a month ago. Still, she is glad to be free from the violent turmoil in her village. “It seems as if we are welcome here. No one has harassed us yet,” she said.
The conflict in Darfur is now entering its third agonizing year. Ultimately, the determined obstructionism of the Sudanese government to bring an effective international peacekeeping force with a strong leadership will ensure that the number and diversity of places like El Geneina will only grow, swelled by refugees and rebels alike.
Free Dafur.
He will be doing his AAR radio show from Darfur by sat'phone on March 14th
http://www.airamerica.com/thomhartmannpage/node/222
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"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
FWIW
And, by the way, Iraq is not getting better. we have destroyed their infrastructure and used it as a way to get taxpayer money into cheney's pockets through no-bid contracts with haliburton. we do NOT want to get involved in the sudan. and by the way, jess bev, saying "i think sudanese people are [deleted] and hoes" is one of the most pointless, hateful, and biggoted things i have ever heard. grow up and open your eyes.
Why does this website charge money for a subscription...they are only there for money. why do Dems raise oodles and oodles of cash...shoot, John Kerry is sitting on a billion alone...not to mention how much money does Al and Tipper get from the carbon-kickbacks...what about kofi-annan...the oil for food sure did go away fast. I guess he paid Bush to have the war so our focus would not be on him when he got caught.
If you think that these folks..left or right are on your side...get real. It's all about the money. Look at the polution in China...the sound is deafening from the EU and UN about them cleaning it up yet good ol america...they need to sign on to Kyoto.
Quit the Double Standard folks...it's only Fair
Yeah, that only works in western countries
Or just sit back and slag each other.
their for more protection as all the blankets in the world are not stopping these poor people from the tragic live they have been forced to live. My prayers are with them, I cry whenever I hear about that country.
Peace.
Political Darkside
www.politicaldarkside.com
Fear not your souls, as those who offend you fear thy own souls. Their day of judgment will be soon, face to face with the creator of this land, and then they have to make restitution of their own soul.
Soul You Know, You are Loved by many.
God Bless, Praying for Peace.
What's the point you're trying to push-- hate?
so that in a few years they can march in there and take the oil( like america did in Iraq) since china is going to be very dependant on oil
o yeah china also has a lot invested in that area
I am just sayin
Ron Paul and the CIA would call this blowback. Rev. Wright would say America's chickens have come home to roost.
"Anti-Racist" = anti-White...Get THAT through your head! freewebs slash godownfighting dot com
And:
An Apology to Blacks from a white South African
We apologize for giving you doctors and free medical care, as a result of which you have been able to survive plagues and catastrophes and grow in numbers;
We apologize for teaching you to read and write, and for building you thousands of schools which we have repaired after you vandalized them and burned them down, After all, if you could not read how could you have learned the words of Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung, and others who taught you how evil we are and how oppressed you are?
We apologize for building factories and highways and buildings that gave you employment;
We apologize for developing farms that to this day feed the bulk of Africa;
We apologize for providing you with warm clothing made of fabric instead of leaving you wearing the animal skins that you wore before our arrival;
We apologize for taking minerals from the earth, which you neither used, nor wanted, nor even knew, were there;
We apologize for those among us who have established welfare organizations and have devoted their entire life towards making life richer and better for your people;
We apologize that we have built roads and railroad tracks between towns and cities which you now use every day without thinking;
We apologize for paying the lion's share of taxation while spending less on ourselves than on you;
We apologize for giving you law and order and a strong central government that prevented your own warrior nations like the Zulu and the Matabele from slaughtering black people by the hundreds of thousands as they did year in and year out before we came;
We apologize for teaching you the English language which has opened to you the entire world of European thought, culture, and commerce;
For all these sins we humbly beg forgiveness, and if you will only accept our apology we will be happy to take back all of the above evil and horrible things we have done to you and return to our European homeland.
A Warning for Americans: A Message from a South African
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveals trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America's structures are of "Western Culture". Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly your "Western Culture", not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman -- that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability,with freedom and justice for all.
But woe to you if -- or more likely, when -- the rules change. Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game -- violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves -- Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
Continued:
http://www.eaglesup.com/warning.html
http://southafricanhell.blogspot.com/
By feeding and sheltering these to further breed we are building the mass occupation of our countries that will be the armies of our death.
You've all been warned.
whitespeech.blogspot.com