600 Killed in Darfur During the Month of May

by Charlotte Hill · 2010-06-08 07:15:00 UTC
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To this day, I can remember the excitement I felt upon learning that the West Wing, my favorite TV drama, was featuring an episode about Darfur, home to the genocide I'd been struggling to end for years through my work with STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition. "This is it," I thought. "We activists haven't just gotten the mainstream media to cover Darfur; we've actually permeated the ranks of the television elite." Success at ending the genocide once and for all was just around the corner; I could feel it.

Turns out, my senses were way off. Four years after the episode aired — and a long seven years since the atrocities in Sudan began — Darfur's death toll is once again skyrocketing. The conflict isn't over.

Or hadn't you heard? Around 600 people died as a result of fighting in Darfur in May alone. According to the BBC, that's "the highest monthly toll since peacekeepers were deployed in 2008" — the highest body count in two whole years. The majority of those deaths were caused by fighting between government troops and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel forces; another 150 died from tribal and other violence.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese government continues to feign interest in establishing peace throughout the country, most recently via negotiations with multiple rebel groups, JEM excluded. It's pretty easy to understand why JEM chose to walk out of the Qatar talks as soon as President al-Bashir and his cronies resumed launching air raids against Darfuris (according to direct reports from Darfur, the Sudan Air Force launched one of these attacks almost exactly a month ago near the village of Tabit, killing a woman, her baby, and her donkey). Peace negotiations are a hard sell when one party's bombing your friends and family on the sly.

"We are in a true state of war after the government reneged on the ceasefire agreement," a frustrated JEM spokesman said last month.

Once again, the Sudanese government has the upper-hand. If JEM returns to the peace talks, agreeing to a tentative ceasefire in the process, no one will be around to counter Khartoum's military offensives. And if JEM remains in the line of fire, returning bombs with bullets, al-Bashir can legitimately attribute Darfuri deaths to rebel fighting, not government-sponsored genocide. Either way, the government wins.

It's a great strategy ... just not for Darfur.

Photo credit: Albert Gonzalez

Charlotte Hill managed the college outreach efforts for STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition. She serves as a 2010 Carl Wilkens Fellow with the Genocide Intervention Network.
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