| By John O’Shea
Published in the Irish Examiner on August 23rd 2004
Three weeks ago I embarked on a long and disturbing journey into
hell.
My starting point was my adopted city of Dublin which I consider
to be as close to heaven as it is possible to get in this life.
In stark contrast, my destination, Darfur in Western Sudan, provided
me with a glimpse through the gates of hell.
In the 27 years since establishing GOAL I have visited the scenes
of countless catastrophes and humanitarian disasters. I have witnessed
drought and famine, been shocked to the core by the results of war
and natural disaster. I have seen what an outbreak of disease can
do to vulnerable communities and looked on in awe at the destructive
powers of Mother Nature.
I have seen the quiet, wide-eyed, acceptance of people as death
approaches before, I have witnessed the silent screams of children
too weakened by hunger to cry out loud and I have heard the night
air being torn by mother’s screams as their children let go
their tenuous grasp on life. But seldom has anything moved me as
profoundly as the scenes I witnessed in Darfur.
Driving through a parched landscape, almost featureless apart from
a steady succession of burned out and abandoned villages, passing
the charred remains of thousands of simple huts that were until
recently home to so many people, induced in me an eerie feeling.
Journey’s end emerged through a sand storm. This surely was
hell on earth. It was like peering into a dimly lit furnace, not
even the sun’s rays penetrated the thick cloud of sand. It
was if the laws of nature had been suspended, air and earth had
fused into one element, a choking, evil witches brew.
As I approached this maelstrom the noises and then the smells of
the pathetic huddled masses that it concealed rose with the swirling
sand and it was a frightening spectacle. Of all the places to seek
shelter this must surely be the worst imaginable. What had befallen
these people that they should seek shelter in such surroundings?
Surely no circumstance could be bad enough that this was an improvement.
Of course I knew what had driven these people to this hellish place;
it was the same thing that had brought me half way round the world
to bear witness.
For 18 months they have been bombed from the air by the Sudanese
armed forces and subjected to attacks by raiding parties of armed
militiamen, called Janjaweed, riding in from the desert on camels
and horses. They have been driven from their homes, forced off their
land and driven into the wilderness. Many of the men and boys have
been murdered while women and girls have endured multiple rapes
and all manner of hardship and torture.
Stripped of their meagre possessions and without any means of supporting
themselves, they have made long journeys in search of escape. Perhaps
a quarter of a million of them have found their way through the
desert and across the border into neighbouring Chad where they have
been put up in camps and looked after by various aid agencies.
Ten times as many as this however are marooned in the shifting
sea of sand that is Darfur and are now gathered in large groups,
desperately hoping against hope that they will be rescued before
they succumb to the many dangers that confront them. It was one
such camp that I was now entering.
At every turn I saw women and children, the absence of men and
boys was immediately noticeable, huddled together under whatever
shelter they could fix up for themselves - often it was just a pathetic
construction of thorn bushes and paper. Everywhere I looked I saw
that all too familiar look of resignation on people’s faces.
Having endured so much they are reconciled to whatever fate has
in store for them.
I saw the same look on the faces of people in the camps which were
set up in Goma in the Congo to accommodate the river of humanity
that flowed across from Rwanda ten years ago. I saw it and shuddered
at the memory of those dreadful days.
These are the forgotten people, the expendable pawns in a deadly
game of international politics. They are paying with their lives
because politicians both local and international do not have the
imagination or do not care enough to find solutions to what are
relatively simple problems.
The UN in particular has proved itself incapable of coming up with
a meaningful response. The Security Council has debated the crisis
on several occasions and argued about whether what is happening
in Darfur is genocide, ethnic cleansing or a series of crimes against
humanity. They dodged that one but finally came up with a resolution
which warned the Sudanese Government to disarm the militias within
a month or face unspecified actions.
Needless to say, the mandarins in Khartoum have so far ignored
these empty threats and have countered with the claim that this
is an internal matter and would treat any intervention as an invasion
of their territory and respond accordingly.
And so, once again, it is being left up to aid agencies such as
GOAL to deal with the human misery that is the inevitable by-product
of such situations.
Thankfully, because GOAL has been working in several areas of Sudan
for 20 years or more, we were well placed to react to this latest
crisis. In January we were the first agency into Northern Darfur
and since then we have been gradually expanding our programme there.
Today we are helping upwards of 200,000 people with temporary shelter,
health care and food. We have inoculated 35,000 children against
measles which can be a killer in such situations and we are setting
up water and sanitation systems.
There is so much more to be done and, because these people have
been unable to plant any crops this year, they will require assistance
for some considerable time to come.
And so, once again I have to appeal to you, the great Irish public,
for your help.
Please, in the name of humanity, will you make a financial donation
to ensure that we can keep the brave and dedicated GOALies in the
field helping the unfortunate people of Darfur in their hour of
need?
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