Darfur: A ‘Shrinking Humanitarian Space’

Consider the windshield of an International Medical Corps Toyota Landcruiser, shattered by six tightly bunched rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle during an ambush set last month along a dirt track that serves as a major road west of this West Darfur market town. A second IMC vehicle caught in the same ambush was hit 17 times.

The incident, which occurred as an IMC medical team was returning from a clinic 30 miles away, marked the first known attack on an international humanitarian agency working in Darfur in which the objective was clearly to kill. Incredibly, only one person—a Sudanese midwife—was wounded.

PHOTO: IMC An IMC vehicle was recently caught in an ambush in Garsilla, Darfur, a sign of the increasing insecurity there.

The attack exemplifies a worrisome development unfolding in Darfur—one international relief groups call “a shrinking humanitarian space”. The expression refers to a gradual erosion of the ability of relief workers to support the estimated 2-3 million civilians of the Darfur conflict who have been forced to flee their homes because of the violence. Aside from a rise in specifically targeted attacks on aid workers—until last month mainly car-jacking and robberies—a broader deterioration of security and strained ties with local Sudanese authorities also hamper their efforts.

Maintaining this humanitarian space in Darfur is crucial for the survival of those victims of war who have already lost their homes and most material possessions. For them, any significant withdrawal by relief groups would be catastrophic.

Humanitarian aid organizations provide life line
For those now waiting out the conflict in makeshift wooden shelters covered by UNICEF plastic sheeting, international relief groups represent a rare life line for food, water, healthcare, medicines—and yes, even education. IMC alone offers primary healthcare services, including vaccinations, consultations and ante-natal care, to well over a quarter of a million people in West and South Darfur. If that work—and the work of other international aid groups in the region—ended, the result would mean greater risk to lives that are already extremely fragile.

“There is no one else,” said Adam Ismail Abker, 31, one of 36,000 African-Sudanese now crowded into the Hamedia Camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) near the West Darfur town of Zaligei. His food comes from the United Nations, his doctor works at the camp’s IMC clinic.

Two members of IMC’s staff who stopped briefly in Beija, a village 20 miles northeast of Garsilla, in the days after the ambush, were questioned by anxious residents wanting to know if IMC’s mobile clinic would resume its weekly visits to the village. IMC temporarily suspended such services to communities around Garsilla in the wake of the shooting, but began them again earlier this month after a security review. There was little alternative.

But international aid workers also help protect the most vulnerable in another crucial way: They are witnesses. Far more than the African Union’s 20,000-strong force deployed to monitor last year’s Darfur Peace Agreement, aid workers are those who move around, take the risks, and stay in touch with local communities. Their departure would remove the last eyes of the international community from Darfur.

PHOTO: IMC A group of children at an IDP camp in Darfur, where humanitarian aid groups like IMC are literally a lifeline for those who live there.

An increasingly hostile environment
Although few believe a major retrenchment of non-profit aid groups is imminent, events are clearly working against them. Indeed, targeted attacks are merely one danger aid groups face in an increasingly hostile, confused environment.

A breakdown of once-strong political alliances and ethnic loyalties under the stress of prolonged war has transformed a conflict that began as a fight between Arab and African Sudanese into a bewildering scene that can now pit Arab against Arab and Africa against African.

New groups of the already-divided rebel Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) appear to be breaking off to form their own, independent units, frequently amid violence. The Janjaweed militia has also begun to splinter into smaller, less predictable groups, often operating on the whims of local commanders. Some Janjaweed units, disillusioned that four years of war has brought them little, are now labeled “independents”, with loyalties only to themselves.

The presence of Chadian rebels, who use West Darfur as a sanctuary for their fight against the government in D’Jemiena, add to an already volatile mix, while reports of newly arrived foreign Arab fighters complete the confused picture. Hundreds of frightened and exhausted new arrivals at the Al Salaam IDP camp near Nyala late last month said they had no idea who had attacked and looted their village.

“They came at night,” said Adam Yahey, one of the men in charge of the group. “We don’t know who they are. We only know they took everything.”

There appears no shortage of arms in Darfur, but international relief organizations have had their vehicles, radios and satellite telephones stolen as newly-formed groups equip themselves to fight.

One Garsilla resident divides Darfur’s agony into two separate phases. In 2003-2004 came the “big war”, where the ferocity of Arab-Sudanese attacks on African-Sudanese drew the world’s attention. Now, he said, it is a little war in a lawless, unpredictable land, where violence reigns, life is cheep and peace seems more elusive than ever.

If you are out alone you risk being shot. If you're a woman collecting firewood, he said, you risk being raped.

PHOTO: IMC An IMC midwife discusses important "dos" and "don'ts" with a group of expectant mothers at our clinic in Tereij, West Darfur. Many of the beneficiaries had walked several miles for an antenatal check-up and attend the lecture.

In this volatile, unpredictable environment, residents of outlying villages that so far have avoided attack have begun to move to the relative safety of nearby towns despite government guarantees to protect their safety. Khartoum, which wants people to leave the camps and return home, sees the assistance provided by international relief groups with suspicion.

And so, collectively, the pressures grow. Gradually, the humanitarian space shrinks.

One European organization left Darfur in January amid concerns about the safety of its staff. Others, including IMC, search to balance the dangers of a deteriorating environment against the needs of Darfur’s victims, make adjustments where they can, and struggle on.