‘If we die today, you will be responsible’

David Bosco accompanies the UN Security Council on its visit to Darfur and finds that even meeting the victims of the conflict can’t stiffen the Council’s resolve

Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem was holding court last Thursday in the VIP lounge at Khartoum International Airport. Sudan’s voluble United Nations ambassador was accompanying the UN Security Council as it prepared for the short flight to northern Darfur. Many hoped that the Council’s visit to the war-torn region would bring diplomats of the member states face to face with the suffering, and so provoke a strong condemnation of Sudanese war crimes. Instead, all our mission really served to highlight was the lack of resolve among UN officials and the lack of contrition from the Sudanese.

From the outset, Abdalhaleem cast the Darfur crisis as little more than a Western plot to weaken Sudan. ‘If Darfur is over tomorrow, they will find a new Darfur. They want to keep us in the intensive care unit.’ The images of horror that prevail in the West are a fabrication, he said. ‘We don’t think there’s a humanitarian crisis in Darfur.’ (The death toll in Darfur is calculated at some 210,000, and 2.1 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting.) The refugee camps are ‘five-star camps’, he said with a laugh. ‘You’ll see.’

Across the room, America’s deputy UN ambassador, Alejandro Wolff, took in the spectacle. ‘I’m not sure why anyone would be proud of hosting the largest humanitarian operation in the world,’ he said. Wolff and several of his Western colleagues hoped that the mission might help convince Khartoum to remove obstacles to the deployment of peacekeepers. The Council has authorised a force of 20,000, but sluggish contributions and Khartoum’s blocking tactics have kept them from reaching full strength. Just 8,000 mainly African peacekeepers are struggling to secure the region.