The Deteriorating Condition in Darfur

Whereas people living in Darfur once only had to worry about the Janjaweed running around on horseback or trucks, now they have to fear the Sudanese military flying helicopter gunships and bombers into the region to inflict yet more carnage.

The recent expansion of air attacks has familiarized Darfur civilians with the sights and sounds of military aircraft.

There is the white Antonov bomber that lumbers past, high in the sky, audible but not deafening. A long, high whistle is followed by tremendous boom. The hole left in the reddish Darfur sand is round and about three feet across. Generally, several bombs are dropped in a pass, and then the Antonov comes by again and, sometimes, again.

The aiming is crude, and rarely do the bombs land anywhere near the middle of a village. Also, they rarely seem to kill. What the bombs do, say those who have been near where they hit, is terrify with the force of their blasts and their seeming randomness.

Abubakar Ibrahim Hassan, a long-faced man in a white robe and knit cap who appeared to be in his sixties, said the Antonovs flew over Bellala Gorf several times that day in July. Residents fled their huts for trees at the edge of the village.

"We knew the fire would come and kill everybody," he said.

But far more frightening are the Mi-24s. The helicopters can be outfitted with machine guns, bombs and rockets designed to blast through heavy armor. Villagers in Bellala Gorf described the Mi-24s firing munitions that left a distinctive trench-like pattern, about 10 feet long and three feet across, the signature of rockets fired from close to the ground.

Villages have emptied as residents flee the new onslaught. But there will be peace. The peace of annihilation of all that stand in the way of the regime in Khartoum. Perhaps then will Khartoum allow the UN peacekeepers to come in and declare that there is no more war there.

And the hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced will quickly be forgotten by the UN that has chosen repeatedly to ignore the situation.