False bravado and promises on the one hand...
Defiant Beshir in Darfur, warns foreigners
Abdelmoniem Abu Edries Ali, AFP, 8 Mar 2009
The United Nations says the aid agency expulsions will leave 1.1 million people without food, 1.5 million without health care and more than a million without drinking water.
Beshir promised Sudan would replace the work of the expelled aid agencies. "We will fill the gap left by the NGOs," he said, without elaborating.
The Sudan Media Centre, a website close to the security services, said Khartoum was
preparing an "alternative plan" to fill the gap, collaborating instead with "national and friendly foreign NGOs."
"Friendly NGOs" - read oil partner China and Co there.
And harsh reality on the other hand...
Sudan can't fill gaps from expelled aid groups: U.N.
Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, 9 Mar 2009
The Sudanese government lacks sufficient capacity to do the work of the aid groups it has ordered out of the country's war-ravaged Darfur region, the top U.N. humanitarian affairs official said on Monday.
Sudan has targeted 13 foreign and three local aid groups saying they collaborated with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which last week issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.
Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem on Friday told reporters that the Sudanese government would have no problem filling in any gaps in aid distribution created by the expulsion of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
But U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes told reporters on Monday that this was not the case.
"We do not, as the U.N. system, the NGOs do not, ... and the (Sudanese) government does not have the capacity to replace all the activities that have been going on, certainly not on any short- or medium-term basis," he said.
That, Holmes said, "is why the challenge is so daunting if the decision of the government of Sudan is not reversed." He said the NGOs targeted by Khartoum accounted for approximately 50 percent of the humanitarian aid capacity in Darfur.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week that U.N. humanitarian operations in Darfur, where some 4.7 million people rely on aid, would face "irrevocable damage" if the decision to shut down the aid groups was not reversed.
U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Ban had not spoken with Bashir in the aftermath of the ICC announcement.
Holmes said Ban, who is on a trip to Haiti, had been working the telephone in an attempt to resolve the crisis and might personally appeal to the president, now an official war crimes suspect, to permit the return of the NGOs.
"One possibility is a discussion between him (Ban) and the president of Sudan at the appropriate moment," he said.
Holmes added that U.N. and NGO staff have faced harassment at the hands of Sudanese security forces, including "intimidatory behavior." He added that U.N. officials had complained about this to the government.
"Assets of international NGOs have been confiscated, including in some cases United Nations assets I have to say, things like vehicles and computers, vital data for assistance to beneficiaries, ... food and non-food items," he said.
Holmes said there were one or two warehouses containing World Food Program food seized by local authorities, which he hoped would be returned.
He added that the supply of food and water at camps for displaced persons in Darfur would become increasingly problematic in the coming days.
Holmes also dismissed Abdalhaleem's assertion on Friday that the decision to expel the NGOs was not retaliation for the ICC decision.
"I think its reasonably clear this was a political response to a decision that has nothing to do with the U.N. or any of the NGOs," he said.