SUDAN WILL be free of foreign aid agencies within a year, according to the country’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, raising fresh fears of a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur.
Speaking before thousands of soldiers and police, Mr Bashir said Sudanese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would take over the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
“We have ordered the ministry of humanitarian affairs to completely Sudanise the voluntary work in Sudan within one year and after that we don’t want international organisations to deal with Sudanese citizens with relief,” Mr Bashir told the rally yesterday.
“If they want to continue providing aid, they can just leave it at the airport and Sudanese NGOs can distribute the relief.”
Mr Bashir has already expelled 13 charities, including Oxfam, since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest. He is wanted on seven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for his role in the Darfur conflict. Government-backed Arab militias – known as Janjawid – have murdered thousands of civilians as part of a counter-insurgency operation.
Yesterday, Mr Bashir addressed members of his armed forces. It is the latest in a series of stage-managed rallies designed to emphasis his grip on power.
“We need to clear our country of any spies,” he told the cheering crowd in Khartoum’s Green Square, close to the city’s airport.
Men in fatigues and carrying AK-47s sealed off the area.
Mr Bashir was an army officer when he was propelled to power in 1989. The military remains his power base.
Aid officials in Khartoum are also concerned that rhetoric directed against western agencies may increase attacks on aid workers. Three western staff with Medecin Sans Frontiére-Belgium who were abducted last Wednesday – Laura Archer, Mauro D’Ascanio and Raphael Meunier – were freed at the weekend after negotiations conducted by government officials.
They said a group called Eagles of Bashir had kidnapped the workers in retaliation for the ICC move.
A handful of staff with the 13 expelled charities remain in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, helping hand over computers, cars and generators to the government.
In some cases they have managed to hand projects on to local groups, but in most places their work is starting to unravel.
“While there is fuel in the camps the water pumps will continue to run, but they will eventually need maintenance, sanitation systems will fill,” said one aid worker. “In most places the fear is the next couple of months rather than days.”
The aid operation in Darfur, where more than two million people are living in camps, has long faced bureaucratic hurdles.
Staff struggled to get visas and were harassed by government officials. Yet the $1 billion operation, involving 14,000 workers, was the largest in the world.
That changed at a stroke, with some 6,500 staff at 13 agencies being told their work was finished.