Darfur: Blueprint for Genocide - Archipielago Libertad

The United Nations Inter-Agency Fact Finding and Rapid
Assessment Mission noted in April the obv ious ethnic
targeting of v illages in the region they visited. It presented
these findings in its April 2004 report:
The 23 Fur villages in the Shattaya Administrative
Unit have been completely depopulated, looted and
burnt to the ground... Meanwhile, dotted alongside
these charred locations are unharmed, populated
and functioning ‘Arab’ settlements. In some
locations, the distance between a destroyed Fur
village and an Arab village is less than 500
meters. 45
At the end of June the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) surveyed 578 villages.
It showed 301 destroyed, 76 damaged and 199 intact. The
survey of 578 villages was not exhaustive. A US official
presenting the report said that US surveillance of v illages
covered much but not all of Darfur. The USAID report on
its satellite surveillance of Darfur at the end of August said
that 405 v illages had been destroyed. 46 This report
follow ed on from the Junesurvey but does not say whether
it survey ed the same number of v illages or more. If the
destruction of 405 out of 578 v illages was representativ e,
we could infer that around 70% of Darfur’s villages had
been destroyed by this point. 47 USAID material on satellite
surveillance published on 10 September demonstrates a
more ex tensive survey, indicating that 576 villages had
been destroy ed and 152 damaged. 48
‘Attacks have been
supported by aerial
bombardment…this
requires planning.’
These reports show that systematic destruction of v illages
has continued unabated in contravention of UN Security
Council resolutions, and despite the stated threat of
possible economic sanctions.
45 UN Inter-Agency Fact Finding and Rapid Assessment Mission
(2004), Kailek Town; South Darfur.
46 United States State Department (2004) Documenting Atrocities in
Darfur, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (State Publication 11182).
47 USAID (2004). Darfur Humanitarian Emergency Satellite
Imagery, http://www.usaid.gov/locations/subsaharan_africa/sudan/satelliteimages.html,
[Accessed 24 September
2004].
48 http://www.usaid.gov/locations/subsaharan_africa/sudan/darfurvillages_0910_tex
t.html [Accessed 20
November].
Section 3: Systematic Actions Amounting to Genocide
The thoroughness of the looting and destruction makes
future habitation of the villages all but impossible. The
poisoning and blowing up of w ells – so v ital to survival in
Darfur’s inhospitable environment – indicates that this is
the intention of the Janjaweed and Sudanese Armed
Forces.
3.2.5 ‘Resettlement’
There have been reports from journalists of resettlement of
destroyed villages by Arabs. This coincides with the
discovery by Human Rights Watch of a Gov ernment memo
proposing the resettlement of Arabs in the deserted
villages of Darfur and ordering the rehabilitation of wells to
facilitate this. The memo also proposed to resettle the
million or so displaced in 18 new locations. 49 This may
hav e been in line with the recommendation in UN
Resolution 1556 that safe areas be created. However, in
prev ious similar situations, as in the Nuba mountains
follow ing the campaign against the Nuba, the GoS set up
‘peace v illages’ in w hich to resettle the Nuba that were
more like ghettos or concentration camps. They were
located in hostile terrain w ith wholly inadequate living
conditions. 50
There are fears that these proposed 18 camps may be
more of such settlements, making displacement
permanent. 51
3.2.6 Detention
Villagers are usually forcibly displaced from their v illages
and forced to move to big villages or towns which become
IDP camps, guarded by Sudanese police and armed
forces, together with the Janjaweed. The IDPs are virtually
prisoners w ithin these camps, unable to leave them even
to carry out v ital life-support activities for fear of attacks by
Janjaweed. The latest confirmation that this is still the case
came from Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, who described the IDP camps as “prisons
without walls” following her visit in September. 52 By
keeping their v ictims inside Darfur, the Government of
Sudan is concealing the scale of its crimes.
Ev en inside the camps, women remain vulnerable to rape
and humanitarianconditions are appalling.
49 Minkey Worden, (2004) Khartoum’s Directives of Death, New York,
Human Rights Watch.
50 See section 2.2.
51 Human Rights Watch (2004) UN Safe A reas Provide No Real
Security, New York, Human Rights Watch
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/09/01/darfur9286.htm, [Accessed
25 October 2004].
52 BBC (25 September 2004),
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3690232.stm, [Accessed 11
October 2004].
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