Later on, I worked in the regional office in Kampala, Uganda and was actively involved in the relief operations in East Congo after the -then- rebels headed by Kabila, headed from Uvira northwards, pushing all the refugees out of the camps and dispersing them into the jungle. That was 1996-1997.

The picture above is from that time, in Kisangani. But it could have been taken yesterday. The violence is the same. The human suffering is the same.

That is why I care about Congo.

Update: (10 minutes after I posted the above)
This press article just came in: Aid convoy finds east Congo refugee camps empty. This is exactly what happened in 1996-’97. I am so pissed off. Once again, the international community saw this coming, and stood by. Watching.

This photo by Kevin Carter won the “Pulitzer Prize” in 1994 and became a symbol of the Sudan famine at the time. The picture depicts stricken girl crawling towards an United Nations camp, located a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat her.
This picture shocked the whole world. No one -including the photographer- knows what happened to the child.

Here is the story behind the picture:

Three months later Kevin Carter committed suicide.

This was Sudan in 1994. We are now 2008. Five years into Sudan’s Darfur conflict. The humanitarian situation is just as desperate. Maybe with less famine, but with just as much despair, as I wrote in several posts about Darfur over the past year.

Many, including celebrities like George Clooney (watch his video diary), Mia Farrow (Pictures and video), Angelina Jolie (Articles), Steven Spielberg (Article) and others have done efforts to raise the awareness over the problems in Darfur.

There are groupings like the “Save Darfur Coalition”, an alliance of over 180 advocacy and humanitarian organizations representing 130 million people, and the Darfur Genocide movement. Amesty International created Eyes on Darfur.

Numerous fundraising websites (like The Darfur Wall), campaigning, video advocacy and education , awareness sites and Online Info Centers were created.

Musicians made songs like Living Darfur. And there is even a game (Darfur is Dying) created to advocate the Darfur issues.

Public pressure was raised against the countries in alliance with the Sudan government, focusing lately on China and its hosting of the Olympics.

Athletes, normal citizens, students, food lovers and bloggers on a global and a local level united to raise awareness and increase pressure on the Sudanese government.

You can buy items online through Yahoo! to show your support and you can even see how each US legislator scores on his or her support for Darfur.

Many governments responded with pressure on Sudan and several UN resolutions condemned the Darfur genocide (Overview).

The African Union sent troops, and UN Peacekeepers were deployed, eventually merging into one, called UNAMID.

And still, despite all of this, peace talks have failed to get off the ground, the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission will not be fully deployed for months to come, and two-thirds of Darfur’s population is dependent on the world’s largest aid operation.

“The situation is not better than it was five years ago,” says Auriol Miller, head of Oxfam in Sudan. “We would still say the situation is getting worse. Humanitarian workers are being targeted and attacked (see this post) in a way that has got increasingly worse over the last few years.”

A BBC reporter recently wrote:

So, if everything else fails, what helps? What is the solution for Darfur? What is the solution for Sudan?

Pictures courtesy Worldfamousphotos.com and WFP.
What set me thinking: Iqbal Latif

Richard, Alf and I are standing on a mountain pass, at the border crossing between Albania and Kosovo. The view is breathtaking. It is part of a movie, projected in 360 degrees around us. Better than a movie.

A long, slow moving stream starts from far behind us. We can hear it, the random noise. It passes right next to where we stand, and follows bends and curves for as far as we can see. A stream, a steady flow. Not of water, but of people. Tens of thousands. Refugees returning home. Whole families on tractors and donkey pulled carts, with all their belongings stacked as high as they can. Mattresses, cupboards, tables, chairs, cardboard boxes… Mothers holding on to babies, brothers and sisters walking hand in hand. Elderly men with deep grooves in their faces, walking with a stick in their hand, or pushing a wheel barrel. A massive flow of people. Each with their own horror story to tell, moving steadily back to their homes. Homes they fled a couple of months ago after Serb militia and special forces wrecked their lives, burnt their crops, raped their mothers and daughters, killed their brothers, sons and fathers. As the stream of people comes the mountain pass, they see the same scenery as I do. I wonder what goes on inside them.

In between the mountains tops, capped tree forests, scarred by cluster bombs which Nato blanketed over them, lay the valleys. Valleys with a fresh green colour of spring grass and young leaves on the trees. For as far as the eye reaches, we can see plumes of smoke coming from the valleys, like candles on a cake, which have just been blown out. Plumes of smoke, going up in the air and dissolving into the clear blue spring sky. Smoke of houses, cars and farm sheds burning, for as far as we can see, dotted over the valleys. The militia and break away paramilitary forces looted and burned everything as they retreated. It looks like the whole country is still burning. People lives are burning. And yet the expression on the faces from all who pass us, is not one of desperation, but one of hope. They all smile. They look at the same scenery as I do, but they think of hope. Hope of starting afresh. They wave at us. They wave at the Nato military trucks and tanks maneuvering in between the stream. The liberators and the liberated.

It is yet another scene of war, another scene of misery and hope, another scene of destruction mixed with hope, of a past and a present. Will it ever end? Will we ever learn from our mistakes?

Two F16 fighter jets blast low over our heads. Instinctively, everyone pulls their heads down. The fighting is not over yet. We hear the remote muffled thunder of a bombing raid. Very far away. The misery is not over yet. As I get into the car, my eyes cross those of a young girl, sitting on her mum’s lap, on the back of a tractor. She looks at me and I look at her. I smile and she smiles back, hesitantly raising her arm to wave to me. Her mum searches who the girl is waving to. She finds me. She whispers something in the girl’s ears. The girl looks up, kisses her mum on the cheek, and looks back at me. She throws a kiss at me. I throw one back and wave. She laughs. Her dad, driving the tractor looks back and waves at me too. Would they know I am thinking of my daughter? Would they know she has the same eyes, the same hair. Would they know this is why I do this work? Because she could have been my daughter, sitting on my wife’s lap. This could have been my family, my life. But destiny has put them there and me here. Sheer luck determined those who suffer and those who never realize enough how lucky they are.

‘Let’s go’, I smile at our driver, ‘let’s go, work to be done’. I can see in his eyes he is thinking the same as I do. We all do.

Pictures courtesy WFP/Tom Haskell

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