The despair of Darfur
Five years after the peak of the violence in the Darfur region of western Sudan, some 2.7 million people remain scattered in camps and dependent on an international community that has no clear idea what to do with them, no sure way of protecting them, and no practical plan for a solution.
“We have created an open-ended, ongoing $3bn peacekeeping and humanitarian process that chiefly serves to maintain the miserable status quo, this stasis of misery. There is no end in sight. Under the status quo now prevailing, there is a certain level of violence that has become normal, large parts of the countryside remain depopulated, pro-government and rebel groups work as bandits, for and against each other, Unamid [the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur] is ineffective, carjacking and robbery has become a regional industry, and millions are stuck in the camps. People say it can’t go on indefinitely like this. But unless something radical changes, it will.”
This is a quote from a western diplomat contained in a recent “Guardian” item on the crisis.