A photo caption with an April 30 article about genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan contained an incorrect first name for a Sudanese teacher. She is Armani Tinjay, not Amina Tinjay.
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A Loss of Hope Inside Darfur Refugee Camps
Girls recite Arabic alphabet in refugee camp three miles outside the South Darfur town of Nyala.
(By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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Currently, Hollywood celebrities, college students, religious leaders and experts champion the plight of the Darfur victims. But despite the attention, the United Nations has been unable to raise enough money to support its operations in Sudan. On Friday, the U.N. World Food Program announced that it had received only 32 percent of its appeal for $746 million for its operations in Sudan, and that food rations to the camps would be cut in half.
"It's really our worst nightmare," said Marcus Prior, a spokesman for the U.N. agency, who was with me during one of my first trips into Sudan. Behind the headlines, he said, there is little hope.
The crisis is getting wider and more complicated.
The mayhem has spread into Chad, where 60,000 Chadians have been forced from their homes by incursions by the Janjaweed, and by a dozen different Chadian rebel groups backed by Sudan, as well as by various bandits and mercenaries.
In another, lesser-known example of the conflict's spillover, thousands of people in the Central African Republic are being displaced by violence as the various militias backed by the Sudanese government use the lawless area to transport weapons.
The Darfur rebel groups, who once fought the government, are now fighting each other and appear less willing to compromise at peace talks underway in Nigeria.
I often think about how Tinjany was still hopeful, during my first visit to the region. She wrote letter after letter, to leaders in Britain, in Chad, to the president of the United States.
"We have nothing here," she wrote. "Will we just rot here like our animals have? We are all Muslims. We are all black. Does anyone care about us?"
She turned to me and said: "I'll keep writing. You are welcome to bring my news."
Soon after I met Tinjany in Chad, I found myself in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, trying to get a travel permit from the Information Ministry. No Western reporter had yet been let into government-controlled Darfur. Days turned into six weeks as I waited for permission to travel.
The young workers at the ministry often warned me: "Don't tarnish the name of the Sudan." But they were always polite, saying that perhaps tomorrow I would receive the permit.
The wait eventually paid off.
