Darfur Crisis
REPORTER: David Brill
My journey begins with a plane flight from the capital, Khartoum, across a vast desert to Nyala in South Darfur. It's a dusty regional centre full of bumpy, unpaved roads. Nyala is surrounded by camps which hold 250,000 displaced people. We're on our way to Otash camp, home to an estimated 57,000. It appears out of the desert. The conditions are just pitiful. It's rare to see someone with a camera here and people are eager to show me their awful situation.
3RD WOMAN IN PINK, (Translation): I'm sick, cold, hungry. We’ve been sleeping on the ground for four months.
WOMAN, (Translation): They couldn't give us any food or drink or even accommodation. Now we are humiliated, how long will it go on? I have been here for four months. I couldn't receive anything.
2nd WOMAN IN BLUE, (Translation): All the children are sick and they've got flu and disease. They sleep on the sand. All of us are tired.
For years the Sudanese Government and its militia allies, the Janjaweed, have been attacking civilians, trying to dislodge a rebel movement.
REORTER: Did they die, many of her friends?
WOMAN IN PINK, (Translation): Four friends died there. The fifth one had her ear cut off.
INTERPRETER, (Translation): How many people died.
WOMAN IN PINK, (Translation): Four, yes they killed them. The fifth is still suffering, they cut off his ear.
INTERPRETER, (Translation): How many died?
MAN, (Translation): There were a lot of deaths, around 400 to 500 died.
And now the situation is even more complicated as rebel groups turn on each other and civilians in a battle for power.
ALUN McDONALD, OXFAM: So we have a situation now in Darfur where there are certainly more than a dozen and quite possibly more than 20 different rebel factions, some very strong with large areas of control and quite a strong military influence, others very, very small and constantly changing, constantly building alliances, alliances are constantly shifting. It makes a very complex environment to operate in but it also makes it increasingly difficult in terms of the peace process.
This camp has been here for five years long enough to establish a busy market. Beautiful things there. Very nice. You can even purchase a hand-made knife or a mobile phone. As I tour the camp, I'm confronted by stern-looking government security officials. They say I'm not allowed to film and want to know what I'm doing here, even though I'm with a government minder.
SECURITY OFFICAL, (Translation): SBS Network one of the most important departments of TV watching in most countries of the world. Our Paris embassy recommended they be helped and assisted in case of difficulties.
My documents seems to satisfy them, but I quickly learn that nothing occurs in Darfur without the say-so of officials like these. I'll be stopped many times during my visit.
REPORTER: Is security good in this camp?
SECURITY OFFICAL: Yes.
The massive relief effort to keep the displaced people alive is coordinated here in Nyala by the government's Humanitarian Affairs Commission, known as HAC
AL-HADI AHMED ALI NEGM, SECRETARY GENERAL, HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS COMMISSION: Hey, Mr David.
REPORTER: Good morning, Secretary-General. How are you?
And this is al-Hadi Ahmed Ali, the Secretary General of HAQ. He's the man everyone wants to see.
REPORTER: Busy day today?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Yeah, busy day.
REPORTER: How many meetings today?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Five meetings.
There's a constant stream of visitors of all nationalities. The sheer size of the refugee problem has all but overwhelmed the bureaucracy. There's a lot of people who wait a long time here to get their problems addressed. It's where I'll spend many hours over the next few weeks, waiting for permission every time I want to visit another camp. I've been waiting here now for four hours. The next day, I make my way into the Secretary-General's inner sanctum. They're working out details on food delivery. They may be busy, but there's still time for refreshment. The Secretary-General says that more than 20,000 people have returned to their villages in South Darfur. He puts a positive spin on the number, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the hundred of thousands still in the camps. And each day brings new problems, more internally displaced people, or IDPs, are on the move again.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: We have a new influx of IDPs. We are going to make an assessment. In this assessment we are trying to find out what the reason is behind this new displacement. The rainy season last year was not good and because of that rainy season the price of crops is getting very high. Now it is getting three times the price of before. This is really a big challenge to us.
REPORTER: It will slow things down obviously?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is going to complicate the situation even more.
Eventually I'm provided with a taxi and government minder for a visit to another camp, Al-Salam. There's 50,000 people here who receive food three times a month. The camp manager is recounting how he's taken on the aid agencies. These sheikhs are responsible for their people in the camps. Again, the problem is food.
CAMP MANAGER, (Translation): We told the aid organisations “You have a responsibility to give us food, if you have food give it to the people. If you do not have it, tell us.” Then they’re free to go. Don't say to us that you will give it to us today but not tomorrow or the day after..
My government minder seems keen to take me away from this scene. Just next to here the food distribution has begun. Supplying food to Darfur costs US$500 million a year. With food prices soaring, the UN says it hasn't got enough money to meet its global food aid commitments. A serious food shortage here would cause even more instability. As I look around, there are so many people in the camps. I wonder if there is anybody left in Darfur's towns and villages.
ALUN McDONALD: If there's 2 million people who are living in camps, now, Darfur only has a population of about 6 million, another 2 million of those live in towns and urban areas. So, you know, the number of villages has greatly reduced because so many have been attacked.
Alun McDonald from Oxfam has been in Darfur for two years. He knows the situation well. But you won't hear the NGOs criticising the government. They fear they might be thrown out of the country, leaving the refugees stranded. Here's his response to a straightforward question about the government and the security situation.
REPORTER: Can the government handle it? Is it too big for the government to control?
ALUN McDONALD: Umm, can we cut that question?
REPORTER: Yep, right, you don't want that, it's a bit difficult, is it?
ALUN McDONALD: Pff, yeah, prefer to give that a miss.
The next day I'm back at HAC, the government's humanitarian agency. This meeting is with the many NGOs working here to discuss the so-called technical agreements for delivering aid. The NGOs are frustrated by the government bureaucracy and the endless passes and permits they need for their work, not to mention the security situation getting worse. One bold aid worker raises the unspoken issue.
AID WORKER: We are not talking about security, about banditry, about the fact that so many things happen, that you can never go with your car without being sure that it will not be taken, the fact that an ICRC colleague was killed the day before yesterday. That 26 WFP trucks have been kidnapped, that something like 18 drivers are missing. You know, maybe... we cannot be catastrophists, we have to identify positive spaces for working, but I think it is fair at this point to look into the difficulties of these people, both legal and practical.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: We've really done all that we can to support the NGOs, to coordinate their efforts, to help them, to oversee the security and all the regulation that they need to implement their projects. OK, ladies and gentlemen for this meeting, and I do appreciate your efforts, and we hope that..
But talk of security problems doesn't discourage the Secretary-General from giving me a personal tour. Today he's taking me to a village that's been resettled. It's an opportunity to put some gloss on the Darfur situation.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: This is the security protecting the people.
REPORTER: Oh good, we'll have a look at that. That's important. These are protecting the people, are they? That's nice to see. They're your people?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Yeah, of course. Government people, yeah.
The 'security' is the Sudanese army, and soon we have to stop. I'm about to learn who wields the power around here.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI, (Translation): We got lost when we left the village, when we saw you we came back.
SOLDIER, (Translation): If that's so, why did you come without information?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI, (Translation): We're using a map.
SOLDIER, (Translation): You have to go through every post.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI, (Translation): When we saw you, we came back to report to you.
SOLDIER, (Translation): No you didn't come back, we ran after you.
Eventually we're allowed on our way. The Secretary-General clearly doesn't carry any weight with the military, and soon after we're pulled over again by a very suspicious soldier.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: We gave the permit to your colleague.
SOLDIER, (Translation): It's wrong to come here like this. This is an operations area.
Despite his reservations, he lets us pass.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: In 2003, this place had been completely destroyed by rebels. They came back in 2006. 2006 they came back.
REPORTER: Pretty secure now, not much fighting?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Yeah, yeah, it's secured. That is the military you have just seen protecting them. Actually, the government has built these schools.
The government is happy for me to film out here - a chance for some positive publicity, given they stand accused of having blood on their hands in Darfur.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: They want also now the primary health care centre to be open and when I go back I will try to find out that they will send them, what is happening. And also regarding this water, they really think that the water problem is not fully solved and also when I go back I will try to find a solution for them.
I develop respect for the quietly spoken Secretary-General. He seems genuine enough, grappling with a massive problem he didn't create. But he's also a senior government official in the region and he runs the government line at this meeting.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI, (Translation): But we have a media message to the international community and to people outside of Sudan is that the Sudanese Government is doing our best at the time and we need to understand the facts. We don't need media distortions.
If Darfur's crisis is a media beat-up, what about well-researched reports which say that 200,000 people have died as a result of the fighting?
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REPORTER: Are they?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: Yeah, they are unreliable figures. Of course they serve some agenda, it seems to me. They serve some other agenda, and it's just not true.
REPORTER: The other day we spoke about the Janjaweed, and there has been for years people saying outside of here that the government was backing the Janjaweed.
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: This allegation of the government backing the Janjaweed, it's not true. This term has been used by the rebel forces, by rebel movements, to embarrass the government and to push the government in a tight corner. That's the real thing.
REPORTER: How is the current situation?
AL-HADI AHMED ALI: The current situation is that there is a cease-fire between the government and the rebels. I mean, security is OK, it is very. The situation is stable and no real problem.
If South Darfur is secure, as the government says, then these people haven't been told. Today I'm at a meeting in another camp called Sakalee. Patricia Drain from Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is receiving some disturbing information about yet another influx of displaced people who've just arrived out of the desert.
PATRICIA DRAIN, MSF NURSE: In addition to these 25 families, what these guys are saying is another 47 families have arrived.
REPORTER: Arrived from where?
PATRICIA DRAIN: Arrived from this place called
REPORTER: In a village that was burnt down just recently?
REPORTER: So fighting is still going on around here?
PATRICIA DRAIN: It's quite far. But yes, it is, it is.
REPORTER: In South Darfur?
PATRICIA DRAIN: Yeah.
It's a very different security picture than the one painted by the HAC Secretary-General, and again it's the innocent people suffering.
PATRICIA DRAIN: And when you speak to them it's, "Why have you moved?" Two reasons is insecurity and food. And a lot of the time the food is the problem because of the insecurity. They can't get out to their crops, they harvest them because they are attacked as they trying to harvest their crops. So they have food sitting there sometimes and they can't get to it.
These are patients waiting to get into the MSF clinic, and now we're on our way to speak with the 47 families who've walked to the edge of the camp. They were attacked 12 days ago by the Janjaweed militia and forced to flee their village. They've been walking ever since. They tried to get into other camps, but no-one would take them. Now they've stopped, exhausted, under a tree.
PATRICIA DRAIN: As we are a medical agency we have no food, we have no shelter, but what we do have - and I encourage you to go, is we have a medical clinic not so far away which is open today, tomorrow and the next day. Please come, bring the children and let us check you out.
Back at the MSF clinic, they describe the attack.
MAN, (Translation): The Janjaweed came with their weapons, riding horses and camels and killing you if you are a male, and taking everything with them and burning houses.
REPORTER: How many did they kill?
MAN 2: They killed 37 people.
And it seems the Janjaweed are never far away. The MSF translator tells me these are their camels grazing on a ridge just outside the camp, a move meant to intimidate. Making South Darfur secure is supposed to be the responsibility of these troops. But today the UN blue helmets are out to meet and greet the locals. Also on hand is the Sudan police band and there's a soccer match with some of the refugees. This is the UN's largest ever peacekeeping mission. There's 7,000 multinational troops in place and another 20,000 supposedly on the way.
MEN: UNAMID is a friend of all and an enemy to none. UNAMID a friend to all, enemy to none. Yes, peace process is going on and UNAMID police are accelerating the wheel of the peace process.
But the so-called peace process has stopped and started for years. Right now it's looking very shaky. And like many things to do with Darfur, or the UN, you can never be sure the remaining peacekeepers will eventually turn up something that troubles the UNAMID South police commander.
POLICE COMMANDER: We need more police, more soldiers to come in so we can quickly make a difference because the expectations of the people of Darfur are so high.
Even as the dancing continues here, I learn that in West Darfur the government and its militia allies are involved in a large attack. It's described by MSF as one of the most violent in years. Thousands more refugees have been forced across the border into neighbouring Chad.
POLICE COMMANDER: We have a challenge, but with the help of the international community with the cooperation of the people of Darfur, we will be able to make a difference.
The ongoing tragedy of Darfur is that those suffering from the conflict have heard all this before.
ALUN McDONALD: They've been promised by the international community for the last five years that they will have protection, that there will be progress in the peace. But there hasn't been, they haven't seen the progress. So they're getting increasingly frustrated at the thought of not being able to go home and being stuck in the camps for years to come. Because Darfur at the moment, if you...if you let it slide off the agenda then it will continue to get worse and the problems will continue