Humanitarian access still difficult, say sources

Humanitarian access to western Sudan's war-torn Darfur region remains limited despite government claims to have opened relief routes, say humanitarian sources. "There is absolutely no access to any place, no humanitarian access," said the advocacy group Refugees International, quoting an agency trying to bring supplies to Darfur. "Things are not changing at all. If they are changing, they are changing for the worse." Last week, President Umar Hasan al-Bashir declared victory over the Darfur-based rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, promising to unlock humanitarian access to the region. The rebel groups, which have dismissed the government's claims, on 13 February reportedly attacked Sellya'a and Yasin in southern Darfur. Two tankers transporting fuel were said to have been hijacked during the attacks, in which two policemen were kidnapped and money looted from two villages. Attacks by bandits have been reported all over the Darfur region, especially along roads linking al-Fashir and Nyala and Nyala and Al-Da'ayn. "It is true that the GOS [Government of Sudan] has captured major towns in Darfur. But it is hardly believable that it controls the whole of Darfur," a source told IRIN on Monday. "Rebels might have changed their tactics. Now they are everywhere and nowhere." The influx of displaced people into the towns of al-Junaynah and Nyala was still continuing, sources told IRIN. Ongoing fighting between Janjawid militias and rebels around Murnei and Jabal Marrah has also been reported. "Generally, the situation is even worse than before," the United States-based humanitarian agency Refugees International (RI) said. More than 700,000 people have been displaced by violence within Darfur, while over 110,000 have fled to Chad since fighting between government and rebel groups escalated in February last year. Some aid agencies have accused the government of deliberately directing food into urban areas, so that people are drawn out of the countryside to get food in the cities, where they are more easily managed by government troops, according to RI. RI urged the international community, especially the US government, to "take steps" to end the civil war in Darfur and to "facilitate - not block" humanitarian aid. "The US and other governments were perhaps too slow to react to the fighting in Darfur for fear of disrupting the peace process in the south. But as death and devastation in Darfur have gotten worse, concern is mounting about a humanitarian crisis there," RI said. "The population is really at risk," an aid worker said, based on reports from colleagues in Darfur. The government had limited press access, so the world had no picture of what was happening, he said. A high-level delegation, led by Roger Winter, the assistant director of the US Agency for International Development, and the UN envoy for Sudan, Tom Eric Vraalsen, travelled last week to the capital, Khartoum, to meet Bashir to follow up on his promises to open up humanitarian access to Darfur. Signs of the government trying to rein in the Janjawid militias, who have been attacking and looting and burning villages in the region, were in sight, a source told IRIN. He cited two incidents in which government aircraft were reported to have bombed Janjawid militias who had looted cattle from the settled communities south and west of Nyala.