Too Huge World

I’m on vacation for 2 weeks. See you when I get back!

“This is really changing our lifestyle,” he said. “But… it won’t last.”

…a driver or a security guard at the U.N. can earn more than a university lecturer or technocrat with 20 years’ experience.

The LA Times has an interesting and accurate piece on El Fasher, a Darfur state capital, where the influx of UN and aid organizaitons is making the city more prosperous than ever.

…dead in Darfur.

Numbers. Can not convey. Human lives.

The government of Sudan is once again restricting humanitarian access to needy populations in Darfur. While the safety of humanitarian workers themselves is, I believe, not a major concern, our ability to access to rural areas is under attack.

During the past year, the large increase in the number of 4-wheel-drive vehicles hijacked in rural areas has led most NGOs and some UN agencies to decide that it is not safe to travel outside the state capitals in their own vehicles. We simply cannot afford to bear the financial or logistical burdens of replacing them. In an effort to continue to access critical areas and implement programs in this insecure environment, many agencies have chosen to use rented local vehicles which do not attract as much attention.

Now the very powerful Sudanese military intelligence agency instituted a complete ban on the movement of foreigners in rented vehicles outside the capital of North Darfur. When taken in combination with the complete lack of security for humanitarian vehicles, this amounts to a ban on the movement of foreign humanitarian workers outside the state capital and a complete violation of the agreement signed by the Sudanese government with the UN for humanitarian operations in Darfur, which guarantee unobstructed humanitarian access.

And the reason that military intelligence gave when asked for an explanation by high-level UN officials? “Foreigners traveling in rented vehicles will make the population believe that North Darfur is not secure.”

As if they needed a reminder.

At least someone has a sense of humor around here.

Things have been getting interesting in my part of the world. The last week has been full of “security incidents” and the requisite radio calls and meetings which accompany them. Therefore, the next several posts will take a detour from the personal, addressing some security-related topics with which I am faced daily.

Recently, Janjaweed caused trouble in the markets of several cities. They looted and burned the market in Kabkabiya, leaving several casualties, and killed one civilian in the El Fasher market. At the heart of their grievances appears to be a changing method of payment of salaries. (And yes, they are paid salaries by the government, no one disputes that here –even government officials.)

Whereas formerly the JJ commander would simply come into town, state the number of fighters they controlled, and be paid accordingly, the government is now requiring that each individual fighter come into town to receive his individual payment. Obviously, the JJ commanders are not too thrilled with this added measure of accountability. (Oh, on a humorous note, heard from the governor of North Darfur himself: “Janjaweed” are officially called “border patrolling groups.” What border they are referring to seems up for debate.)

While the Janjaweed salary issue seems to be resolved for now, other elements are adding uncertainty to an already volatile environment. Recently, an unusual number of assassinations have left many on edge, threatening to further anger and fragment an already uneasy populance. For its part, the government is nervous about the tenuous loyalty of certain groups and individuals. Although I do not expect humanitarian workers themselves to be targets at any point in the near future, the wider security situation will no doubt remain extra delicate for the coming months.

What happens with the unarmed UN policemen in Darfur? They get robbed too. Oh dear.

Sudanese army captain defects to Chad with at least $1 million (USD) in cash meant for militia salaries. Clever… and dangerous.

Earlier this week I received news that Gabe, a good friend still young, had died.

An unrelated incident helped to lift an otherwise difficult week of mourning. The story starts six months ago.

The medical personnel at our field clinics examine hundreds of patients daily. Rarely does any one require more than a referral to the pharmacy for basic medication. There are, however, a few cases every month that must be taken to a hospital for further treatment.

One case, in mid-October, was particularly serious. The young patient was an eleven-year old girl named Umanas (“Mother of the People”). She suffered from frequent fainting spells and persistent weakness, among other symptoms. Her family claimed that her problems had started after their village was attacked in the early years of the war in Darfur. She saw her home burned; uncles, aunts, and cousins lying dead, caught as they tried to flee. However, after several consultations, doctors determined that she most likely suffered from a chronic heart valve failure. The only place which offered viable treatment for such a condition was in Khartoum – a brand-new heart hospital, operated by an Italian non-profit organization, imported practically piece-by-piece from Europe – a marvel of modern medical technology set amidst some of the most beautiful gardens in Sudan.

So, after several months of delays, Umanas, accompanied by her father, arrived at an airport for the first time in her life, boarded her first airplane, and landed in the bustling metropolis after a life lived, as a co-worker noted, “in a donkey-world.” But Umanas seemed to notice none of the novelty. She was only half-alive: she lay down for the whole flight, she did not speak, she did not smile or look us in the eye. Upon arrival at the hospital she lay in bed the whole day.

Earlier this week, I picked her up at the hospital after a two month stay and heart valve replacement. She was laughing, smiling, and chattering all the way back from the hospital to our guest house. Umanas was another girl altogether. She explored the big house, she sat slightly-confused in front of the television, and then told me confidently that she had learned to speak English at the hospital.

It was the morning after I learned of Gabe’s death.

So, a life taken and a life re-gifted. Nothing meets the loss of Gabe. Yet I could not help but wonder at the beauty and joy of seeing Umanas “live” again and the privilege of having played a part in it, however small.

An entry I wrote but never posted from my time in Khartoum.

Little is more humorous, I think, to my Sudanese neighbors than the sight of a white person (me) learning to ride a motorcycle. “Learning” may be too generous a description: it involved stalling every hundred yards, going round and round the block. Understandably, I was the center of attention. Almost every other white person in the city (including myself, much of the time) is riding around in an SUV with a UN or NGO license plate. But my organization happened to have a motorcycle sitting around…

In what I thought was a clever move, I decided to begin my foray into motorcycle riding on a Friday afternoon on the dirt roads around our house. I thought Friday afternoon was particularly strategic since all of our neighbors, I imagined, would be at the mosque on this the Muslim holy day. And, indeed, they were. For about five minutes. Then I start to notice groups of men walking home. Apparently the services got out earlier than I thought! So here I am, obviously struggling, severely underdressed for Sudanese culture (jeans and a t-shirt), going down the dirt roads at minimal speed, the motorcycle making all sorts of weird noises because its painfully obvious I am doing something wrong.

It seems I’m practically the only person in Sudan who doesn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. Everyone wanted to kindly come to my rescue, telling me how I should be doing it. No matter what the age, 10 or 40, the pedestrians seemed to know more than I did.

And everyone is smiling at the sight of a khawaja struggling to ride a motorcycle. At least I made someone’s day a bit more interesting… Actually, I seem to do that quite a lot around here!

Yesterday, US presidential contender Barack Obama gave a speech which sought to defuse the controversy over the outspoken words of his former pastor and spiritual mentor, Rev Jeremiah Wright.

In a sermon on the Sunday after the attacks of 11 September 2001, Mr Wright suggested that the US had brought the terror attacks on itself through its own foreign policy.

And in a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the US because of continuing racial injustice, saying: “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.”(BBC News)

What bothers me are not his comments.

No, what frustrates me, rather, is the reaction to them. Obama has condemned these comments as “completely inexcusable” and “not only wrong but divisive.” While I recognize that this may be the necessary rhetoric for a presidential candidate in today’s America, why must this be so?

It reminds me of how little I and so many others around the world – US citizen or not – have in common with the American mainstream.

I am not defending the accuracy or wisdom of Rev. Wright’s admittedly controversial statements. Yet I do believe that they should be allowed to have a voice in the public sphere, rather than being buried under the rug of collective ignorance and outrage.

These issues must be addressed: America’s foreign policy was and is a significant contributing factor (not an excuse) for the anger felt by militants like the ones that committed the 9/11 attacks. And America remains a nation with serious problems of racial, social, and economic injustice. It is not out of the question for a Christian pastor such as Rev Wright to believe that God would judge America for its collective sins against the most vulnerable of its citizens.

Let these questions resonate through the land and change it. Let these debates happen. Yet for someone to raise these questions and then automatically be branded unpatriotic is both ludicrous and depressing. It makes me glad to be thousands of miles.

Adam is a Sudanese friend and co-worker of mine here in Darfur. The other night, after work, he began to tell me his story.

“At the age of eleven I left my home in central Darfur and went to live in Khartoum,” he began. Like so many others from the underdeveloped rural areas of Sudan, Khartoum presented him with the only opportunity for advancement in life. It was here that Adam was able to begin his formal education.

“By the time I was seventeen I had reached the 5^th grade,” Adam explains. “I wanted to continue my education, I wanted to learn English well and go to university. But my mom was worried about me.” His mother had remained behind in Darfur and was concerned that her son would not return to the homeland – that he would become yet another assimilated citizen of the burgeoning capital city. “I told my mother that I wanted to stay and finish my education. I told her it was important. But she insisted.”

His mother and extended family decided that they would do whatever was necessary to bring Adam back to Darfur. “My mother arranged for me to be married to a girl back home. I was seventeen, she was thirteen.”

Adam told his family that he did not wish to be married, that he wanted to stay in Khartoum and finish his education. But the family, the strongest bond of Sudanese society, would not compromise. For Adam, there was no question of what was to be done. His family had spoken. He dropped his life in Khartoum, returned to Darfur, and was promptly married.

“We were both so young; we understood so little about life,” Adam says now. After the public marriage ceremony, he offered his young bride a way out. “I said to her, ‘I know we don’t really know each other, I know we’re very young, and that this was forced on us… so if you don’t want this, you can walk away right now and we will go on with our lives as best we can. But, if you need this, if you need me to be your husband – I will.’”

The marriage survived. Today, 15 years later, Adam has five children. While he is an articulate, intelligent, and happy man, he still speaks with obvious regret and sadness about the chance for an education which slipped away.

I write letters to Sudanese government offices on a regular basis. Most are completely procedural, nothing unusual about them, just day-to-day work – requesting a visa, an approval, a travel authorization, a customs clearance, or a clarification. I often end these letters with something similar to, “Thank you for your cooperation and assistance…” Usually I don’t think too much about such platitudes, but there are moments when my conscience pangs.

While the government office I am addressing might happen to be cooperative at the moment, the institution as a whole is certainly not. (That is, if it can be described as a cohesive institution. As others have noted, the government of Sudan is built around several centers of power who often pursue divergent agendas and at times seem to conflict.) As documented summarily on this blog, Sudan’s government has repeatedly and forcefully sought to impede the work of the UN peacekeeping force and the humanitarian community. I see evidence of it almost daily.

I will sit in a meeting with OCHA (the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), being told that we should be happy to know that the UN has finally renewed a document governing basic principles of peacekeeping and guarantee unlimited humanitarian access in Darfur. Then that same week, if not the next day, I know I will hear of several NGOs being stopped at a government checkpoint, being refused access to a camp where they work every day providing vital medical care. Or I will hear that the government has refused humanitarians access into an area where they have been destroying villages for the past week.

Sure, I am well aware that Sudanese government has a habit of violating both written and verbal agreements, that they continue to ignore a growing number of strongly-worded Security Council resolutions. But the baseness of it all seems to reach new depths when one must pander to these same people on a daily basis in order to get anything done.

“Thank you for your partnership in providing assistance to the people of Sudan.”

A few days ago a prominent rebel leader in Darfur, Abdel Wahid Al-Nur, the head of the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM), announced that his group was opening an office in Tel Aviv, Israel. Now the rest of the world probably took no notice whatsoever, but the Sudanese government saw what they thought was a chance to turn the people against a rebel leader who is only rising in prominence.

A few days ago, in the town where I now live in Darfur, the government went to great lengths to make sure the entire population knew of Abdul Wahid’s terrible transgressions and put all its power into organizing a street protest. Sound cars were sent down every street in every neighborhood - including the refugee camps - in an effort to stir up the population. And, as seems to be common practice in autocratic countries, the government strongly suggested if not required that its employees attend the planned protest.

Well, I think the government minions were probably the only ones who ended up going. The protest collected about 700 people – many half-heartedly chanting and carrying banners. State radio broadcast the speeches that followed. From the little Arabic that I have, every other sentence seemed to include something with reference to Islam or Allah.

I talked to one of my Sudanese co-workers, a “non-Arab”. He said, “The government thinks that we will be upset about this because Israel has killed Arabs. But we don’t care. We’re not Arab.” Not very diplomatic… but again, the people of Darfur seem to feel very little loyalty to or identity with the Khartoum government. Oh, and the religious manipulation didn’t seem to get very far either.

Read here for interesting reactions from others in Darfur.

And here for the government’s over-the-top reaction. Accusations of “foreign hands” in Darfur. How ironic.

Dear reader, sorry for my long recent absences from this blog. Life has become even busier and I find I often lack the energy at the end of the day to write and publish any thoughts.

However, I will be moving to Darfur this week to take a new position closer to the field work and hope that this will stimulate my writing!

While you wait, if you want something to read, check out this BBC News article on Turkey’s attempts at reinterpreting the Hadith - the sacred sayings and interpretive guidelines that shape so much of Islam. Very interesting. Potentially, very controversial.  I’m interested to hear what my Muslim friends have to say about this.

“Sudan holds ‘fundamentalists’ over US [diplomat] killing”

Hmm. So it was “terrorists”, after all. I believe it because it contradicts what the Sudanese government said after the attack and what they have said on other occasions of violence in the capital.

But it seems to be getting precious little press here. None of my usually well-informed friends had heard about the arrests. Strange. It would seem the government is, as we have seen before, very sensitive about suggestions of unrest in the capital.

After a long absence, the proverbs are back!

“Even a new disease is good for the telling.”

This is used as a rebuke to a friend, telling him to not to change his behavior just because he has something new. It might turn out to be a bad thing (a “disease”) and you, as his friend, know he is just the same old person as before!