Darfur Genocide - Google Earth images from above

For the last few weeks I have been exploring Darfur in Google Earth. This is what I have been looking at:



What you see in the photo above is a village in Darfur recently destroyed and abandoned. What has happened to the people who lived there? I have seen over 1,000 villages like this in the new satellite imagery of Darfur. Take a look yourself using this file Destroyed Darfuri Villages . You will need to have the Google Earth program installed to use the link.




The photo is recent (2006) and the genocide is continuing. Here is a report dated Dec 8 from Doctors Without Borders more properly known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

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At least 50,000 civilians fled to the precarious refuge of the arid countryside after a series of violent attacks in Muhajariya and the surrounding area. For many of them it was not the first time they had to leave—they had been displaced from other regions and were already living under difficult conditions in displaced camps at the edge of town.

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This is the 'city' of Muhajariya:



These are the children of Muhajariya at Kalma Camp, South Darfur: (Photo: AAP Image):




This is Kalma Camp:



Believe it or not these kids are lucky, Kalma Camp is near the airport, close to Nyala, the closest thing I've seen to a modern city in Darfur and it has lots of access to aid organizations. Other Muhajariya are not so fortunate.

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Thousands of families, forced to flee because of violent attacks, are scattered over inhospitable terrain south of the town of Muhajariya. They are living in small groups under bushes and trees, hiding from the scorching sun during the day and cold at night. Their food is running out, and they have little or no access to clean water. Photo © MSF

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The MSF (Doctors Without Borders) report continues

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MSF found an elderly man lying under trees to the east of Muhajariya with a gunshot wound and an open fracture of the femur. He described how his home in the village of Angabo was attacked on November 13. "Ten people came inside. They asked me who I was and if I had a weapon, then they shot me, took all of my money and burned my house. I was still inside when they set fire to it."

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The Muhajariya news is disturbing because this is the region of Darfur which is still somewhat intact. The vast region to the northwest has been nearly entirely destroyed. To get a sense of the scale of the destruction take a look at the Google Earth image below. The orange pins indicate the location of a village which has been detroyed. Each villages was home to several hundred to several thousand people before being destroyed. (You can download the Google Earth placemarks here)
You can also read posts in the Google Earth Community forum on Darfur here and here.



In many regions _every_ village is destroyed. Many of the residents dead.

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For many, the violence came without warning. "I was in my home when I heard gunfire," a man who fled southwards, told the MSF team. "I stayed where I was and the next thing I knew I was shot! It was my hand that was hit. I saw two vehicles with fighters on the back of them—there must have been fifteen on the back of each vehicle. They were just shooting and shooting at my friends and into our homes."

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The scope of the genocide is clear. If it doesn't break your heart, take a look at the camps in Chad



These camps are simply vast seas of tents in an even vaster sea of desert as desolate as any place on earth. From a UN report

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Touloum camp in eastern Chad houses more than 21,000 Sudanese refugees, the majority of them women and children ... Touloum now counts more than 21,000 refugees and it looks like most of the refugee camps in eastern Chad: tents covered with sand, children running around, women waiting with their jerry cans to collect water from the boreholes, goats and donkeys searching for food in the sandy soil.

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These are among the poorest people on earth. Even without the war, these people struggle against the harshest of living condition. Now even that been taken from them. Their entire country has been burned, the people killed, the property stolen. An esitmated 400,000 Darfuri have been killed, 2 million refugees are scattered. A minority are surviving in camps such as Touloum. That is the situation and it's _getting worse_ as we read this.

Chad is now in the midst of it's own internal violence
MSF report on Chad

Darfur violence is escalating and the increasing lack of security is preventing the few remaining aid organizations from functioning

MSF report on Darfur

So what is our government doing about it? Read this headline at the USAID site

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Recent peace agreements in southern Sudan and Darfur bring with them the chance to improve the humanitarian situation of Sudan's most vulnerable people. Peace in Sudan also promises to advance regional stability, safeguard human rights and religious tolerance, end state sponsorship of international terrorism, and ensure the delivery of aid. The United States is the largest international donor in Sudan, consistently providing 80 percent of all humanitarian assistance-and more than $1 billion since 2005.

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That's it then. I guess the war is over.

If you see through the self promotion, you may want to do something yourself that will really make a difference. A few dollars is likely to save a life. There are many aid orgabnizations active in Sudan, but my reccommendation is to help Médecins Sans Frontières. They have a strong presence in the toughest part of Sudan. Three MSF aid workers have been killed in their effort to save the Darfuri people. Please consider a donation to to MSF this year. It will make a great Christmas gift


thecoco

Or consider a donation directly to the UN refugee aid organization
UNHCR.

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$80
Provides an all-season tent to shelter a family of 5 from the elements.

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note:
This post below was also posted on Daily Kos as a diary.

Hi blt!

Thank you for the effort you are putting into this and for sharing it!

Have a great Christmas!

Heamit:
Thanks for your encouragement. After spending time to mark both destroyed and intact villages, a pattern emerges which unmistakable.
Take a look at the pic below:



The orange areas indicate regions where every single village has been destroyed. This is unambigious and the cleansed regions constitute a good 30% of the Darfur region.

There is more to this pattern. The cleansed regions are surrounded by the major towns of Darfur which are indicated by yellow pins. The one city within the cleansed region is named Sisi and it has signs of recent damage.

To see for yourself, open the overlay and see if you can find a single intact village in the marked regions.

Check out the video interview with 3 journalists working to document the damage. Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro. They produced the film and book. "Darfur Diaries: Message from Home.".

book
Video Interview

The attached overlay contains a number of maps of soutrhern Darfur from Humanitarian Info. The maps are found in this file from INTERSOS.

You can read about the project here

Read the full report. The report details the dtatus of hunderes of individual villages. Here is the report on Um-Dirabiro

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Um-Dirabiro
( N 12,481830 ; E 22,677200 )
Village destroyed with Returnees Last Visit: 27/12/2005

Um-Dinabiro was a big village (about 1000 families) inhabited by Dajo, Tama and Musalit African tribes. During the crisis the village has been
completely destroyed and all the people fled to Habila, Forobaranga, Um Kher and to Chad. On June 2005 only 13 families came back to
cultivate but they seem genuine because we reported their presence also end of December 2005. The security situation is good, there is a
police station and a Fursan station too. Sectoral Issues. Health: nearest PHC in Habila, 30km. Education: before the crisis there was a
primary school in bricks that now should be rehabilitated; nearest primary school in Tamar, 5km, but not accessible during the rainy season
because of the wadi Azum. Water: 4 hand pumps, but neither is working; one traditional well. Food: people are not registered for
WFP distributions.

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And this is what the village of Um-Dirabiro looked like a when the satellite imagery was taken:

I managed to extract the data fom the INTERSOS village report into a set of color coded placemarks. The attached kml file contains placemarks for 513 villages in southwest Darfur surveyes by INTERSOS in 2005 and 2006.

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The Darfur crisis of 2003 created a varied and complex picture of displacement that was difficult to
analyse and challenging for the international community to fully understand. The work of the
humanitarian agencies in West Darfur is often complicated by the lack of reliable information due
mainly to the intricacy of the population movements. A variety of factors impacted upon the
decision to move from one place to another. The Return Profiling exercise has gathered basic
information about certain villages that was useful to support war affected communities, sustain
voluntary return and prepare the ground for an eventual voluntary return of a large number of IDP’s
and refugees to their villages of origin.

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Color code:
white - no data
red - destroyed or abandoned
magenta - destroyed with returning villagers
purple - inhabited with refugees
green - inhabited by Nomads
blue - inhabited by Africans
gray - inhabited by Arabs
yellow - destroyed but now inhabited by Nomads

It might be useful to illustrate the different classifications used by INTERSOS

An African Village


An Arab Village


A Nomad village


A destroyed village


A destroyed African village with Nomad occupiers


An abondoned village with some returnees


For comparison, here is the Sirba refugee camp. Note the regular grid of dwellings


A W. Darfur town - Al Geneina

When one reads of attacks on villages in Darfur a common report is that villages have been bombed by Antonov AN26 planes such as the one below..



HRW 2005 report

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Human Rights Watch documented four major attacks on the area, and a number of smaller attacks. These major attacks took place in July-August 2003, December 2003 and January 2004, February-March 2004, and July-August 2004. More than three hundred people were killed in the attacks between May 2003 and August 2004.34 Witnesses noted that each large attack involved Antonov aircraft, helicopters, Janjaweed militias on horses and camels, and the Sudanese military in vehicles.

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April 27, 2006 HRW report

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According to eyewitness reports, government forces and militias began attacking Joghana at 7 a.m. on April 24. Civilians who fled the town said that an Antonov plane and two helicopter gunships were used and that the Antonov dropped bombs that killed civilians, although the numbers of dead and injured could not be verified.

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April 27, 2006 - IRIN report

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Local observers confirmed that the offensive started on 28 August when the villages of Abu Sakin, Kulkul, Sayah and Turra, approximately 35 km northwest of the capital El Fasher were attacked from the air by Antonov planes. Subsequently, Sudanese armed forces took over the area and pushed further northwards, recapturing Um Sidir on 31 August

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11 Sep 2006 - IRIN report

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"On Saturday, Antonov planes were bombing seven villages south of Tawilla town, focusing on Tabarat and Tina," a local source, who declined to be named, said. "On Sunday, about 45 vehicles carrying government troops moved through Tina."

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Consider this image drawn by a boy in a Refugee camp from Slate in 2005

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This picture, by a 15-year-old boy, shows Antonov planes bombing his village. His mother, father, and brothers were all killed in the attack. His uncle told the family's story:
"It was July 2003. At 6 a.m., the Sudanese government soldiers and Janjaweed came by car, tank, horse, camel, and on foot. … Men, women, and children were killed—some by bombing, some by shooting. Some ran away. All our livestock, property, and food were taken. Then the village was burned. … Later a plane came in the evening and burned the village. All the people who were still hiding in their huts—the old, the weak, the blind—were rounded up by the Janjaweed and shot. One hut was set on fire with someone still inside."

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UN report 22 September 2006

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People regularly attributed these aerial bombardments to the now-infamous white planes that dropped bombs on villages in what was reported to be an indiscriminate manner, causing civilians to flee as well as killing and injuring others, he said.

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I believe this may be one of the 'now-infamous white planes' an Antonov AN26 The attached placemarks locate 7 of these in military airports in Nyla, Al-Fashur and Al Jinaynah Fort. Apparentley these are more properly Iran-140s, an Iranian version of an Antonov plane.

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Ans it's still going on Jan 03, 2007 report

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Saturday's attack on villages near Kutum in North Darfur, was carried out by a government Antonov plane, according to the AU force commander, Luke Aprezi. The raid came two days after the AU mission and the United Nations mission held meetings with rebel commanders in the area.

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Shocking .

After I'd wrangled my anger under control. I started educating myself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur

April 17, 2007

UN PEACEKEEPERS GET GREEN LIGHT
Sudan Agrees to Darfur Deployment

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,477679,00.html

But like the "excusese" quoted above in another post in this thread, this entire agreement could be renegaded upon.

The huge global nature of this conflict is palpable though. According the The Spiegel, China has been involved.

The UN says it will take 6 months to get together a force, when what is needed it these attack helicopters protecting people immediately.

I wonder if the problem is sadly, mostly one of ignorance.

Khartoum's Proxy Wars seem to have worked. Many people seem to think that the conflict is the result of a few psychotic renegades, when they, actually seem to be "proxies" for the government so they can avoid international condemnation for the atrocities. Clever ? Or does it take a lot of ignorant people to fall for their lies ?

I started a monthly payment to MSF, but I feel it is the very least I can do.

DJ Barney

blt -

This is a spectacular post. I admire your thorough documentation and passion for this subject.

Diane