According to this article, yep. That seems to be the case.
And it indeed seems as if the situation is worse than previously thought.
UNITED NATIONS - NASA (news - web sites) photos of the Darfur region of western Sudan show destruction in nearly 400 villages, and there have been reports of fighting or threatened attacks in every camp for displaced people, the U.S. aid chief said Wednesday. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the Agency for International Development, warned that time is running out to help 2 million Sudanese in desperate need of aid in Darfur. He said his agency's estimate that 350,000 could die of disease and malnutrition over the next nine months "is conservative." {...}We've now analyzed 576 villages, 300 of which are completely destroyed, 76 of which are substantially destroyed," he said. "When we checked them on the ground, we confirmed what we found. We are going to watch them, using aerial photography for the duration to track what's happening."Contrast that with the Human Rights Watch report's numbers reported in this post:
BRANCACCIO: How many villages did you see? FLINT: I probably saw about 17. But it's hard to move. I mean, I moved with a force of probably about 100 men. Some close to me. Some further out. Some in advance. It's a huge, Darfur — the size of Texas. It's very hard to know what's going on. And it's very hard to be blanket. Because I think not every area, the war will not be the exactly the same in every area. So, I basically selected a block. And I looked at the 60 square kilometer, 25 square mile block, which had 14 villages. And I visited all those villages but one. Eleven had been burned. And if there were huts remaining, it was a handful. All the others had gone.While Flint chose a block of land because of her limited time and resources, who knew that the actual number of villages that would show damage is tallied at almost four hundred? FOUR HUNDRED. Let that number sink in. All I can say is that since the mainstream American media seems intent on ignoring this story as too inconvenient to cover, and we apparently are forced to rely upon aid workers for intelligence, let's hope that NASA keeps a satellite or two tasked on Darfur so we at least have some information as to the width and breadth of this genocide.
Natsios said the U.S. government has spent $116 million on the relief effort in Sudan — more than all other donors combined — "and we pledged $188 million between now and the end of next year." The United States is moving "with a maximum sense of urgency to try to save lives," said Ranneberger, who accompanied Natsios. "We don't have time to sit around also and decide, is this ethnic cleansing or is this genocide, or what is it." Natsios said President Bush (news - web sites) has made clear to Bashir that U.S.-Sudanese relations will not be normalized "until these atrocities are stopped and until all impediments to the relief effort are ended." "They badly want the normalization of relations" after an agreement ending a 21-year civil war between government forces and rebels in southern Sudan. "You cannot have peace in the south and a new civil war in the west," Natsios said. "It's just not going to happen."Finally! Someone said it. Question is, when is the UN going to say the same? Or even do the same?
UPDATE: 06/01/2004 Courtesy of the Enlightened Cynic a link to the International Crisis Group's recommendations for action in Darfur.
The Sudan government has effectively played on fears that its peace talks with the SPLA in Naivasha (the regional, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, process) might unravel as a means to continue its brutal strategy while shielding itself from criticism. Western governments have played directly into that strategy. They have given total priority to Naivasha while only quietly engaging Khartoum about Darfur in an effort to secure incremental improvements in humanitarian access. They have refrained from directly challenging it there even while attacks continue and access is continually impeded. But a failure to resolve the catastrophic Darfur situation will undermine not only the last stages of negotiation in Naivasha but also the prospects for implementing whatever agreement is ultimately reached there. Urgent action is required on several fronts if "Darfur 2004" is not to join "Rwanda 1994" as shorthand for international shame.
Go read the whole thing.
UPDATE II: political scientist and fellow blogger Daniel Geffen chimes in with a post
about a CARE breakfast---with Darfur as its main focus---that he
attended this morning. Nick Kristof, one of a very few western
journalists who has actually been writing about Darfur, spoke.
Interesting observations all around.