Violence Slows Aid To Darfur Refugees

Allen Pizzey Reports On The World Food Programme's Efforts To Help Sudan’s 3 Million Displaced People

(CBS)  As food is delivered to a refugee camp, the welcome is as urgent as it is exuberant. Somewhere in the middle of the crowd is the American woman whose job is to feed millions of innocent victims of a devastating — and ongoing —war in the Darfur region of Sudan. CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey reports from Darfur on the heroic efforts that are being made to help them.

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Barely three weeks after taking over as head of the world's largest aid agency, Josette Sheeran has come to the middle of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Most of the food aid in the refugee camps of Darfur goes to women, to ensure it feeds families and is not sold.

"We'll do what it takes to reach people, often at great risk to our own staff," says Sheeran, who is executive director of the U.N.'s World Food Program.

Three million people have fled to the relative safety of the camps. But in spite of a peace agreement, fighting continues, cutting off aid workers from those most in need.

"We've had a series of carjackings, and since June of last year, the World Food Programme had 45 security incidents, security incidents," she says.

Sheeran must work with the Sudanese government — the same people who sponsor the "Janjaweed," an Arab militia that has rampaged across Darfur. More than 1,500 villages have been burned and Washington has accused the Janjaweed of genocide against black Africans. But the conflict is more complex than that.

Three years ago the people in a camp Pizzey visited had only two or three armed groups to fear — and flee. Now there are more than a dozen militias running rampant in Darfur, all with their own agendas, and paymasters.

A 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force can barely look after itself, never mind protecting displaced people or aid workers from non-governmental organizations.

"There are towns where we used to have NGOs and U.N. that have been abandoned because things are so insecure. ... For me things have gotten worse and worse," Chris Czerwinski of the World Food Programme in North Darfur.

For now, helicopters are the only safe way to get around Darfur. But $27 million is needed to keep them flying through the end of the year.

But so far, money for food aid has been easier to find than the will to confront the Sudanese government over the crisis, and until a political solution is found to the war, these people won't be going home anytime soon.

[infidel_us]

Democrats LOVE to use US troops for things like "peacekeeping" and "food hand out" programs....which is the job of the UN and NOT our military.

The way bedwetting libs wring their hands over the wellbeing of our troops in Iraq, one would think deploying them to a cesspool like Darfur would be the last thing on their minds. Apparently not.

[perception5]

Where's the United Nations? Why do they allow this to continue? Is the UN going to follow the same path as they did in Rwanda when 1 million people were killed as the world watched?

I guess the UN is busy working on another damming human rights abuse report on the USA........ really sad.

[homespunlady]

Apparently Darfur is still off the SPIN MACHINE radar. It would be a GREAT question to ask about in the upcoming Republican Candidate Debate but unless they find a huge oilfield there in the next few hours I can lay bets there'll be "nary a peep".

[radiob-2009]

The tragedy the world has stood by and watched unfold. A opportunity for the US to twhart radical Islam ignored.

[akrk33nnn]

Nonsense. This situation isn't complicated at all. The terrorist government in Khartoum, financed by China and other terrorists throughout the world is murdering non-arab farmers in the Darfur region. Guerrillas gleaned from these farm communities, and the refugee camps of those who used to be peace-loving farmers before their land was stolen from them, are fighting back. What could be more simple? An immediate, permanent NO-FLY zone over Darfur, as well as the southern section of the Sudan, would allow these farmers to reclaim their villages and get on with their lives. The Khartoum/Chinese-financed camel-riding Janjaweed can go back to chewing qat in the slums of Khartoum - no problem.