Plenty and penury, action and inertia in Darfur

By Louis Charbonneau

ZAM ZAM CAMP, Sudan (Reuters) - Markets stocked with fresh fruit and vegetables. Shiny new gas stations. Freshly built houses. Smooth paved roads. A pizzeria.

These are not images one would normally associate with Sudan's western Darfur region, where hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have died in five years of conflict. But they are all found in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state.

El Fasher is home to thousands of civilian and military personnel working for the United Nations-African Union joint peacekeeping mission (UNAMID), and while food here is plentiful, prices are inflated after poor harvests.

The United Nations says a "perfect storm" of growing violence, overcrowding in refugee camps and bad harvests could cause a food crisis in Darfur, home to the world's largest humanitarian operation.

Just 10 km (6 miles) from El Fasher's colorful market stalls, thousands of displaced Darfuris struggle to survive in the Zam Zam camp, battling disease, bandits and growing hunger.

These people used to get over 2,000 calories a day. Now they survive on 1,400 calories as aid agencies cut rations because of attacks on food convoys. Some of the children have bloated bellies, a possible sign of malnutrition.

Eric Reeves, a Darfur activist and professor of literature at Smith College in Massachusetts who has studied Sudan for nearly a decade, warns that ration cuts may cause "significant human starvation in the coming months."

International experts say at least 200,000 people have died in Darfur since 2003 when mainly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Khartoum. Another 2.5 million have been left homeless.

Khartoum puts the number of victims at 10,000.

There is little hope of a political breakthrough to allow the people at Zam Zam, some of whom have been in the camp for years, to return home.

Stalled peace talks were dealt another blow last month when the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked a suburb of Khartoum. Top U.N. and AU envoys have said an international summit should be called to put pressure on the parties to come back to the negotiating table.

LAND OF CONTRASTS

Darfur can seem a land of contrasts and contradictions.

In places, it is barren, a lunar-like terrain with just the occasional tree or bush. But suddenly green trees and wide swathes of fertile soil appear.

This is a land where U.S. officials say "genocide in slow motion" is taking place, a charge Sudan denies. It is also a land where foreign peacekeepers complain of being bored.