Press Release/Commentary by SDEMB posted on April 27, 2005 at 19:18:07: EST (-5 GMT)

PRESS RELEASE: DEATH TOLL IN DARFUR - THE POLITICS OF NUMBERS

(EMBASSY OF SUDAN WASHINGTON, D.C., 04:27:2005):

In March, 2004, USAID, in a briefing replete with colorful diagrams, estimated that by the Fall of 2004, between 300,000 and 400,000 people would lose their lives in the conflict in Darfur, regardless of international aid efforts. At that time they cited malnutrition as the likely cause of the majority of the deaths. The AID Agency attributed the numbers to “scientific methodology”, without further elaboration. This estimate was clearly a prelude to the characterization of the Darfur tragedy as “genocide”, an American claim that would soon follow. By the Fall of 2004, a figure of 50,000 surfaced. It was not well received by the self-styled and professional “Sudan watchers”, so a figure of 70,000 was floated and attributed to the World Health Organization.

A delegation of the Arab Doctors Union visited all of the internally displaced peoples’ camps in Darfur for a full month in the Fall of 2004. Their conclusions brought into serious question the WHO figures of 70,000 deaths, and as a result of their challenge, WHO representatives in Sudan and the Mediterranean region began to distance themselves from the figure, claiming that they had no knowledge of its source or origins.

In March 2005, the U.N. Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs visited Darfur and remarkably claimed that the casualties of the conflict had reached 180,000. When queried on the source of those numbers, he said “he was told” that was the figure! There was no further elaboration on who might have told him.

The Washington Post, for reasons known only to its editorial staff, has uniformly insisted on advancing the casualty figures in Darfur as being as many as 400,000. In an April 24, 2005 editorial, the paper refuted out of hand the figure of 60 – 160,000 deaths noted by the Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Robert Zoellick, suggesting instead that the figures cited by the staunchest and most perennial Sudan critics, Dr. Eric Reeves and Mr. John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group, were more accurate. The Post did not provide any background on why their numbers should be taken as more reliable than those of the United States Government.

These wildly swinging numbers claimed by the various interests groups united only in their deep animosity toward Sudan can have only one explanation – pure politics. Not only does the truth become yet another casualty in the tragedy of Darfur, but these exaggerations serve no purpose save that of encouraging the rebel groups to keep on fighting and thus preventing a real peace process in Darfur from gaining traction. The cynicism involved makes it clear that stopping the conflict is secondary to the goal of “keeping the pressure on Khartoum.” It is high time that the American sense of honest, transparent goals and fair play replace the cynicism of the biased interest groups which have only served to prolong the tragedy.