Casual Slaughters - Or, Places Not To Be, Part 1

As enjoyable as it is to write about Gaza, I have a certain amount of sympathy for homicidal leaders who spend years destroying their countries and slaughtering their citizens (paging Mr. Bashir and Mr. Mugabe) only to see their efforts relegated to the back pages of the newspaper anytime the conflict in the Middle East flares.

There's a quote I love from Shakespeare, from Hamlet, which I think serves as a fitting introduction to such a post:

Let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things come about: so shall you hear
Of carnel, bloody and unnatural acts
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning, and forced cause...
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads

So, in the interests of cosmic balance, a quick tour through other, non-Gaza crises and catastrophes:

Afghanistan:

I've written about hunger in Afghanistan, and the fact that millions of Afghans risk going hungry this winter.  And, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Afghanistan isn't about to become self-reliant on food anytime soon.  Three decades of conflict and a severe drought do tend to cut into one's agricultural productivity.

It's not simply hunger - most Afghans lack access to even the most basic services, especially in rural areas, which is one reason why Afghanistan lays claim to the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the world.  (Sierra Leone is still number one, so to speak.)  According to a recent article in the Washington Times:

"For about every 62 infants born here, one mother dies during pregnancy, in labor or during the postpartum period. The resulting rate of 1,600 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births is five times higher than in neighboring India and 123 times the rate in the United States."

In some districts, the numbers are far worse, with maternal mortality rates as high as 6,500 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births recorded in one area.

Chad:

Chad is often forgotten, overshadowed by the conflict in Darfur, save for the occasional 10,000 word article in the New Yorker.  (Which, I admit, I have not yet had a chance to read.  That said, if anyone has any thoughts on the New Yorker article, would love to hear.)

That said, Chad is an unfortunate place to be, not least because of the war in Darfur, which has long since spread into eastern Chad.  There are approximately 250,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad, as well as 180,000 Chadians who have had to flee their homes due to the fighting.

Yet other parts of the country are also brutally destitute.  For instance, according to an IRIN article which appeared in December: "Aid agencies have begun emergency therapeutic feeding in western Chad, where a recent study revealed that 20 percent of children under five are acutely malnourished."

For those interested in learning more, the United States Institute of Peace recently released a briefing paper entitled Toward Resolving Chad's Interlocking Conflicts.

Congo:

As I wrote last week, The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) a Uganda rebel group, reportedly massacred over 300 people in northeastern Congo in the days after Christmas.  The UN estimates that 7,000 civilians who fled the attacks still remain displaced.  According to the deputy governor of Orientale Province, where the attacks occured: "The humanitarian situation remains very critical".

The LRA is now reportedly fleeing towards the Central African Republic, chased by armed forces from Congo, Uganda and Sudan.

Meanwhile, North Kivu Province - where fighting in the fall of 2008 forced over 250,000 people to flee their homes - remains unstable, with continuing attacks by armed groups and bandits.  To read the most recent North Kivu Humanitarian Situation Update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, see here.

To read what it's like actually working in the camps in North Kivu, see this excellent blog by Emily Meehan, who works for the International Rescue Committee (IRC).  For an analysis of how the fighting in eastern Congo threatens the entire region, see here.

Darfur:

President Bush yesterday announced that the US would undertake an "immediate airlift" to provide vehicles and equipment to the AU-UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.  The airlift will involve two C-17 cargo planes, which will land in Darfur long enough to offload 75 tons of large vehicles and heavy equipment.  US troops aboard will provide protection.

The move was met with some skepticism.  Yesterday's article in the New York Times quoted John Norris, the Executive Director of the Enough Project, who said:

"It is certainly more than passing strange to have the national security adviser come out and say that this step is being taken and Congressional notification is being waived because of the urgency of the situation in the last two weeks of the administration, when Darfur has been on fire for five years."

I'm inclined to agree, though also - to give credit where due - President Bush has focused far more attention on Darfur than most other African conflicts ever receive.

(There, one New Years resolution down, about saying something nice about people I tend to dislike.  Now, to only quit smoking.)

Opinio Juris is also reporting that the International Criminal Court might soon issue an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Bashir - which, as I've written before, could spark a much greater humanitarian catastrophe if it causes the Sudanese Government to move against the displaced person camps, or expel all international aid agencies.

In other Sudan news:

- If the north-south civil war - which killed almost two million people, most in South Sudan, and caused another four million to flee their homes between 1983 and 2005 - does rekindle, Abyei will probably be the flash point.  Abyei is an oil rich area on the border between northern and southern Sudan, the status of which was determined (theoretically) by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005.

Yet where there's oil, trouble invariably follows - both north and south Sudan are still arguing about implementing the CPA, while tensions in Abyei are growing.  In May, Abyei town was attacked by the Sudanese army; fighting again broke out between northern and southern Sudanese forces in mid-December.

[Photo of refugee camp in eastern Chad from www.ushmm.org]