I don't know how much any of you know or have followed the situation in d@rfur (<--I am writing it this way to avoid any searches on my e-mailings) or the events in Sud@n these last few days. The president of this country now has a warrant out for his arrest due to the events in the last few years in d@rfur. This happened a couple of days ago, and I don't know how much it has been in the news in the States, but it's kind of been the main thing here.

As a retaliation to this action, the government here has revoked the licenses of many aid/development organizations working here and sent all of their foreign staff out of the country and halted any and all of their aid efforts in d@rfur. This has caused several dear friends to leave the country, as well as several of my students at our school.

Even worse than that, it has made a desperate situation in d@rfur brought even more to the brink. Many MANY people (thousands upon thousands) living there are currently living in refugee camps that are supplied and run by these various aid organizations. They have now had supplies halted and been stripped of any communication items (radios, phones, computers, etc.). The people who returned to Kh@rtoum from there in these last couple of days are estimating that if nothing changes (that is if the government does not reinstate these aid groups or chooses to do nothing themselves, which is incredibly likely), that these camps will be out of food supplies in about 1 week and out of water in about 2 weeks. You will have tens of thousands of people on the western edge of this country simply being starved out in the desert or trying to move themselves across the desert to get out of the country.

Why am I writing to you? Because even though I am actually here in this country, I can do very little. I cannot post this on my blog and must be careful about the information that I pass along. I have no idea if this is even being reported on the news in the States. I know that the President of the US has contacted some organizations here to get information--but they are limited in the time and resources to get back to him before they themselves are forced to leave the country.

If you can and feel so compelled to do so, I would ask that you communicate with anyone and everyone you know who might be in a position to raise awareness about this--that could include your Congressman, Senator, Governor, local media, churches, and (long shot, I know), write to the President on the White House website, as I will be doing. Ask them to report on d@rfur and find out what is going on. The window of opportunity from this going from very very bad to absolutely worse is very short.

Sorry to bug you with this if it's not something you're interested in--if you are interested, PLEASE make some noise about this in the next few days.

Labels: Darfur