This week the aid operation was dispatched with a single, clean blow.
This is how Catherine Bragg, the UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, sums up the position now:
Thirteen international NGOs have now been expelled from Darfur, and another four national NGOs have had their registrations revoked. This affects some 6,500 staff, or 40% of the humanitarian workforce in Darfur. This will have devastating consequences for the 4.7 million conflict affected people, of whom some 2.7 million are IDPs. The absence of these NGOs means that nearly 1.1 million people may be without food at the next distribution time, 1.5 million are now without health care, and over one million could soon lose access to potable water.
Bank accounts have been frozen and computers seized.
UN officials are furious. They tell me the humanitarian operation was always going to be vulnerable in the week the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir. Speaking about the ICC one told me, "It's the ultimate act of Western self-indulgence."
Once again it's the people of Darfur who are suffering.
'Save Darfur' campaign lies about Sudan
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
By: Chris Banks
Inflating death toll to serve imperialist aims
Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled on Aug. 8 that the statistic used by the Washington, D.C.-based Save Darfur Coalition in its 2006 advertising campaign—400,000 deaths in Darfur since the conflict began in 2003—is unsubstantiated. The authority said it should have been presented as opinion, not fact.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Aug. 26 that the current mortality rate in Darfur is near, or perhaps even below, the region's pre-conflict level.
The exaggerated death toll and genocide claims have been used by the U.S. government to tighten economic sanctions against Sudan. Threats of a colonial, Iraqi-style occupation also have proliferated.
"[G]roups in Washington, D.C. ... are using very distorted accusations in an attempt to get yet another military intervention in yet another oil-rich Muslim country," said David Hoile, director of the European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council.
The U.S. government’s aim has been "regime change" in Sudan since at least the early 1990s. It aims to force Sudan into the U.S. sphere of influence entirely.