Daily Darfur: Could Mass Migration Break Bashir?

Following the issuance of a warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court last week, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir retaliated by kicking 13 large humanitarian aid agencies out of Darfur. Could this move, however, be his downfall?

First, a bit of breaking News: Six aid workers from MSF-Belgium (aka Doctors Without Borders), one of the MSF contingencies not expelled from Sudan, were kidnapped in Darfur.

Khartoum issued an open invitation to "well meaning" foreign NGOs to replace those expelled for allegedly colluding with the International Criminal Court. Michael Kleinman provided a summary of Khartoum's supposed "evidence" against the 13 agencies expelled last week, all of which is almost certainly fabricated. Humanitarian agencies fiercely adhere to their apolitical missions, precisely to avoid situations such as this that jeopardize their operations, and the vehemently deny the allegations.

A coalition of advocacy groups, led by the Save Darfur Coalition, sent a letter to President Obama, reminding him of his professed "unstinting resolve" to end the genocide in Darfur and asking for immediate action to reverse the expulsion of aid agencies.

Cracks Begin to Show

An article from the AP speculates that Bashir is likely to evade the ICC arrest warrant and continue his despotism for quite sometime. This is not unexpected or unusual, however, as it often takes a few years to apprehend fugitives of international law. (Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was on the run for 13 years before being apprehended.)

Apprehending Bashir seems like a particularly challenge in light of his current support from the African Union and the Arab League --- Eritrea, for example, invited Bashir to visit, and Qatar assured Bashir that he is welcome to attend an Arab League summit at the end of the month. But cracks are beginning to show, as voices of dissent raise questions about the Arab League's support of man responsible for such destruction. Bashir himself isn't overly confident of his position either, it seems --- new rules and procedures are being implemented for Bashir to continue international travel "selectively" and in "secrecy." Bashir also skipped a scheduled trip to Ethiopia this week, without explanation.

Bashir's support in Africa seems almost certain to erode, as the effects of the aid agency expulsion begin to ripple across the region. As Michael reported yesterday, neither the UN nor the Sudanese government can fill the gaps left by the departing agencies, which account for over 40% of Darfur's humanitarian operation. So what happens when food, water, and other basic services run out in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps? People move. Without the reinstatement of the agencies, we will see sudden and massive migration, likely cross-border, and the creation of a new refugee crisis sure to compound the region's existing challenges.

This isn't a distant prospect, either. As Nick Kristof reports, it's really just a matter of weeks:

"A friend in an aid organization passed on to me these U.N. estimates of the impact of the expulsion of aid workers from Darfur: within a period of less than two weeks 1.1 million people will need food; within a period of less than two weeks 1.2 million people will need water; within a period of less than two weeks 1.5 million people will be without access to health services; within a period of less than two weeks 760,000 people will not have shelter at the beginning of the rainy season; within one week water supplies in most camps will not be operational; within two-three weeks, you may have a widespread diarrhoea epidemic in the camps due to the lack of water and services and potentially unrest in the camps; within one month you are likely to have a mass movement of people from camps without NGOs to camps with NGOs.

Pretty sobering."

Many of the IDPs-turned-refugees would likely move to Chad, but they could scatter six ways to the wind --- and no country bordering Sudan has the capacity to absorb them. Massive, rapid repeat displacement would be difficult to manage on its own, but it would also overlap with other regional issues. A brief rundown:

• In addition to hosting 250,000 refugees from Darfur (compared to Darfur's 2.7 million IDPs), Chad also has over 50,000 refugees from the CAR, and 180,000 of its own population internally displaced due to internal conflict. The Chadian/Sudanese border is also a conflict flashpoint, as both the governments of Chad and Sudan have used each others rebel groups in a proxy war against each other.

• Refugees could go to any of the countries bordering South Sudan and cause an even more complicated mess. Joseph Kony and the LRA, the rebels from Northern Uganda, are currently camped out in the northeastern DRC, and frequently conduct raids across the border into Sudan. I'm not sure of the figure, but a decent number of Congolese civilians have fled into South Sudan as well, trying to escape the LRA. Large numbers of refugees from Sudan's North/South civil war, which (technically) ended in 2005, are still in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

SO....clusterfudge.

[Photo by AFP: Sudanese women carrying sacks of relief food in Boro Medina, southern Sudan.]