‘Civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region face wholesale destruction’: Reeves

The current events in Darfur amount to “a vast human catastrophe” according to an article by Sudan researcher and commentator, Prof Eric Reeves. In the article in The Washington Post on Saturday, Prof Reeves (see background below) laments that Darfur “was regularly making headlines before 2008, when the then-five-year-old genocide in Darfur had claimed hundreds of thousands of African lives, but a lack of sustained mainstream attention meant that the surging violence fell off the radar”. Reeves: “Few could have predicted that this remote and obscure region in western Sudan would galvanize American civil society. Then again, how could the loss of attention have been so rapid?” He cites that the UN recently estimated that “300,000 Darfuris had been displaced in the first five months of this year; more than one million civilians have been displaced since the fall of 2008. Human Rights Watch recently reported that “satellite images confirm the wholesale destruction of villages in Central Darfur in an attack in April.” In his article, Prof Reeves acknowledges that “Radio Dabanga has long reported brutal assaults on camps for the displaced, chronic breakdowns in the vast humanitarian effort in Darfur, an epidemic of rape and the appropriation of African lands by Arab militias, which ensures continued instability and displacement. “Although violence has ebbed and flowed over the past decade, it has accelerated sharply in the past year. Yet until recently, news coverage has been paltry and often deeply misleading. In February 2012, the New York Times declared from western Darfur that one of the world’s most infamous conflicts may have decisively cooled,”citing “returns by the displaced as evidence. In fact, half a million people had been displaced in the preceding two years and violence was unrelenting.” He highlights: “Last August, western North Darfur became another arena of violence during a tribal-based land grab for the Jebel Amir gold mines. The major town of Kutum was overrun by Arab militias that looted humanitarian resources. Nearby Kassab camp was also overrun and emptied of some 30,000 people within a day.” Prof Reeves calls the Obama administration in Washington to task, accusing the US government of “an unforgivable lack of attention and leadership” in terms of Darfur: “In 2009, as president, Obama again declared that “genocide” was occurring in Darfur, yet little followed from this… The policies of Obama’s administration have hardly matched his rhetoric.” Prof Reeves concludes by suggesting: “It’s time to ‘re-couple’ Darfur to all bilateral issues between Washington and Khartoum.” Eric Reeves is a Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in the USA. He has spent the past fourteen years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. As in the article mentioned above, he often refers to Radio Dabanga as a source. He has testified several times before the US Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan. Working independently, Reeves’s book about Darfur A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide was published in May 2007. He has recently published Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 — 2012. File photo: (sudanreeves.org)Related liks: Read the full article in The Washington Post Prof Eric Reeves’s blog