"General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon]."
Quite a list, huh?
"Battle for power widens in Sudan; Violent crime jeopardizes relief efforts" by Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post | June 22, 2008
EL FASHER, Sudan - Five years after the Darfur conflict began, the nature of violence across this vast desert region has changed dramatically, from a mostly one-sided government campaign against civilians to a complex free-for-all that is jeopardizing an effective relief mission to more than 2.5 million displaced and vulnerable people.
While the government and militia attacks on straw-hut villages that defined the earlier years of the conflict continue, Darfur is now home to semiorganized crime and warlordism, with marijuana-smoking rebels, disaffected government militias, and anyone else with an AK-47 taking part, according to UN officials.
The situation is a symptom of how fragmented the conflict has become. There were two rebel groups, but now there are dozens, some of which include Arab militiamen who once sided with the government. The founding father of the rebellion lives in Paris. And the struggle in the desert these days is less about liberating oppressed Darfurians than about acquiring the means to power: money, land, trucks.
What isn't antwhere these days?
Though there are some swaths of calm in Darfur, fighting among rebels and among Arab tribes has uprooted more than 70,000 people this year, compared with about 60,000 displaced by government attacks on villages, according to UN figures.
Although powerful countries such as China, which is heavily invested in Sudan's oil, have been criticized by human rights activists for not doing more to pressure the Sudanese government to end the conflict, some analysts say the breakdown of command lines on all sides has made the situation increasingly impervious to outside influence.
And CUI BONO?
Meanwhile, the proliferation of banditry has become the biggest threat to humanitarian groups undertaking the largest relief effort in the world and to a nascent UN-African Union peacekeeping force. Their trucks and sport utility vehicles are stolen almost daily, used as fighting vehicles or sold for cash to middlemen who haul them to Chad and Libya.
Carjackings were once rare in Darfur, but 130 humanitarian trucks were taken last year, and the count so far this year is 140. Of those, 79 belong to the World Food Program, which sometimes recovers the trucks from the side of the road, abandoned by bandits who ran out of gas.
The insecurity has crippled food distribution. Last month, the organization was forced to halve rations for millions of people in camps and villages.
"This is a new dimension for us," said Laurent Bukera, head of the program's North Darfur Area Office. "This week, there's been a carjacking every day - every day."
On a road leading south from here, carjackings are so frequent that World Food Program officials recently discussed using a helicopter to reach a camp of 50,000 displaced people that is a 30-minute drive away. Along a 30-mile stretch of road farther south are no fewer than 15 checkpoints manned by various militia or rebel factions. Heading west, Oxfam has been a victim four times.
Just wondering why this isn't reported everyday, everyday, everyday.
No, we get shit on a shingle from the AmeriKan MSM!!!
The Wild West style of banditry is not happening only along the roads.
In recent weeks, a group of disgruntled militiamen - the notorious Janjaweed - rode into El Fasher on horseback and attempted to rob the National Bank of Sudan, complaining that the government had not paid them.
During the first four months of this year, 51 humanitarian compounds in towns across Darfur were raided by armed men, compared with 23 during the same period last year, according to the United Nations.
Relief groups in El Fasher are topping walls with razor wire and taking other precautions. Oxfam workers have resorted to using banged-up rental trucks, taxis, and even donkey carts to deliver supplies, hoping to make themselves less enticing to potential bandits.
The insecurity has not yet reduced the impact of the relief effort. Rates of infant mortality and malnutrition have dropped significantly since 2006, for instance.
Crisis averted then?
But in the nearby Abu Shouk camp, where tents have been replaced by mud-brick houses and walls spiked with broken glass to deter break-ins, people have noticed that humanitarian workers visit less regularly.
"They used to check on us every week," said Tigani Nur Adam, a teacher who has lived in the camp for five years.
Of the seven Oxfam locations in Darfur, four are accessible to workers only by air, said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the group who recently survived an assault on his compound.
"The conflict has become so much more complex," he said. "There were three rebel groups, and now I don't think anyone knows how many there are. . . . The lines of who's who are much more blurred."And CUI BONO?
And that wasn't the only Sudanese article today:
"Celebrating progress of lost children; 54 from Sudan look back at how far they've come" by Ryan Kost, Globe Correspondent | June 22, 2008
Yar Ayuel is one of the "lucky ones."
At age 7, she was forced from her home in Sudan. She was separated from her mother, running with her brother and father from a government that threatened to kill them all. Her father was killed along the way. As far as she knew, her mother was, too.
But she and her brother survived. They made it to a refugee camp, and in the winter of 2000, they were two of the 54 lost children of Sudan to come to Boston.
Eight years later, Ayuel, now 25, has created a family in Arlington. She has married another of the lost children. She is now the mother of a 2-year-old boy. And she is attending Pine Manor College.
That is why she is "lucky." And that is why, she and others say, she feels compelled to pay it forward.
When the 54 refugees - 48 boys and six girls - arrived in Boston, they carried little with them. Their birthdays were unknown. Their identities were linked to a number they had been given at their refugee camp. They wore clothing given to them by the United Nations. Now all these children have grown up. All 54 have completed high school, and all 54 have gone on to some form of higher education.
Yesterday, many of the 54 gathered at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Arlington to celebrate the progress they had made.
The journey was striking, said Jeanne Woodward, director of the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program of Lutheran Social Services, which welcomed the children years ago. "They are self-sufficient. They all have jobs. They passed the MCAS, which is no small thing."
In many ways, the story of the lost children has come full circle.
Aduei Riak, 24, could stay at the celebration only for a short time. She is leaving today for Sudan. The Brandeis University graduate is going back to visit a school she's helping to build.
"It's a duty," she said just before she left. "We are some of the very few lucky ones. It's something we need to share."
She is not the only one who feels this way. Bol Riiny, 25, arrived in Boston when Riak did. He graduated from Concordia College in New York and works at Southern Sudanese Community Center in Boston. "I feel like I'm working for my people," he said. "It's to help those who didn't make it here."
Like Riak, Riiny hopes to return to his home country at year's end. He'll spend a month there, he said, helping to build a school and looking for relatives.
Gee, the way the MSM makes it sound, the country is falling apart.
Ayuel, too, has decided that she must give back. Once she graduates she plans to work with some sort of refugee advocacy group. She has also taken in a recent Sudanese refugee - Ayak, her 17-year-old sister.
One evening in 2004, after she had settled into life here, she was forced awake by the ringing of a phone. On the other end of the line was an unfamiliar voice. "It was my mother," she said. "I didn't believe she was alive."
But she was, and so, too, were her sisters, whom she had never met. Before she could visit, her mother died in the refugee camp, and her sisters were sent to Boston. The younger sister, Adut, 13, is living with another foster family. But Ayak, and her 1-year-old son, Joshua, are living with Ayuel.
How come teen pregnancies are only a problem with Americans, Globe?
Sigh.
Look I LOVE ALL BABIES and think they should ALL BE CARED FOR!
What I object to is the SELECTIVE AGENDA-PUSHING by the AmeriKan MSM!!!
Living together, Ayuel said, has been "difficult and different" at times, but she wanted to help with their transition in a way few others can. She speaks her sister's language. She can empathize.
"I didn't want her to go through the things I went through."No one should have to go through any of this -- which is why I'm more and more convinced that governments suck.
Either they oppress you or fail to protect you.
And we all know why -- because it was NEVER ABOUT US to begin with!
