Was the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian Doctors Syndicate mission to Darfur about relief or politics? asks Gamal Nkrumah International concern for the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region has resulted in numerous relief operations. The success rate of relief agencies, however, has been uneven since the displaced people and refugees of Darfur need tremendous support. Only now, it seems, have the horrors unleashed by the war -- wanton destruction and the displacement of more than one million people in Darfur -- galvanised the Egyptian medical establishment to lend a hand. But, criticism that humanitarian assistance from Arab countries is not forthcoming persists. To dispel the negative image of Arab and Egyptian indifference to the deplorable humanitarian situation in Darfur, the Egyptian Doctors Syndicate dispatched a medical emergency relief and fact-finding mission to Darfur. The mission, which returned last week, held a press conference on its findings on Tuesday at the syndicate's Cairo headquarters. Syndicate officials said that the artificial distinction between emergency relief and development assistance should cease. After offering relief to the people of Darfur, the region should benefit from reconstruction and developmental efforts, it said. But Egyptian human rights groups were severely critical of the findings of the Egyptian Doctors Syndicate, an organisation dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and regarded as ideologically sympathetic to the Islamist-oriented Sudanese government. Even though the mission cooperated with the Sudanese authorities it had no direct dealings with either of the two main armed opposition groups in Darfur: the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The syndicate offered a rather lame excuse for not dealing with the armed opposition groups of Darfur. "We visited eight camps and they were all in areas under Sudanese government control. The SLA and JEM forces are concentrated in the mountainous Jebel Marra area. They come out of their mountain strongholds and strike at government facilities and then quickly disappear into the mountains," said Dr Mansour Hassan, the secretary-general of the Doctors Syndicate and the head of the syndicate's emergency relief mission to Darfur. His team had no direct dealings with either the SLA or JEM, he insisted. Hassan told Al-Ahram Weekly that while conditions in Darfur are deplorable, relief supplies are now getting through. He added, however, that there is still a large number of displaced people in desperate need of help. Hassan said that the Egyptian medical mission to Darfur worked closely with the officials from Sudan's Ministry of Health whom he said were very helpful. They also met with the Sudanese Minister of Agriculture Mahjoub Al- Khalifah, who heads the Sudanese government's negotiating team with the SLA and JEM. "The Sudanese Ministry of Health provided us with four-wheel-drive vehicles and officials from the ministry accompanied us wherever we went. But they never interfered with our work and we freely mixed with the displaced people in the camps," he said. Such close collaboration with the Sudanese authorities arouses the suspicion of international observers because of the Sudanese government's appalling human rights record. "The credibility of the syndicate's mission is in question," Baheieddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights, warned. "The findings of the mission are suspect because they contradict the reports of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International which have released horrific accounts of atrocities committed by the Arab Janjaweed militias in Darfur," he explained. "Even the Sudanese government itself does not disclaim gross human rights violations in Darfur or deny the humanitarian catastrophe in the war-torn region. I hope the syndicate revises its report, because if it does not do so it will lose all credibility." The mission lasted for three weeks. According to syndicate officials, twelve doctors treated hundreds of displaced people, mainly those who sought refuge in the camps on the outskirts of Darfur's main urban centres. Hassan explained that due to the difficult terrain and bad weather, they were unable to travel to Nyala, one of the areas most affected by the war. "We would have had to charter a special plane to Nyala, so we opted instead to extend our stay in camps around Al-Fasher and Al-Geneina," he said. They stayed for 10 days in the camps in the vicinity of Al- Fasher, and nine days in those near Al-Geneina. The Egyptian doctors also say they trained Sudanese paramedics and young Sudanese doctors at Al-Fasher University and at the city's three hospitals, which Hassan described as reasonably equipped. The two hospitals in Al-Geneina, however, were in very poor condition, he said. And in spite of widespread reports of rape by Amnesty International and other Western-based human rights groups, the medical mission to Darfur say they found no conclusive evidence of rape cases. The credibility of such an assertion is rather precarious, however, since the syndicate's mission to Darfur did not include a single woman doctor. According to Amnesty International, the Janjaweed militias, allied to the Sudanese government forces, used systematic rape of women and children as a means of terrorising villagers. But the Egyptian doctors who toured Darfur's camps argued that many Western humanitarian relief agencies in Darfur have a hidden agenda. "Western humanitarian relief agencies active in Darfur interfere in domestic Sudanese politics. We Egyptians, on the other hand, offer medical aid and relief assistance with no strings attached," Hassan said. He said that he suspected the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in Darfur was the real reason behind the sudden upsurge of Western interest in the region. "Sometimes the humanitarian relief agencies grossly exaggerate the humanitarian and security situation in order to advance their own interests and influence Sudanese politics. Many Western humanitarian relief agencies, for example, said that cholera was rampant in the Riyadh camp. When we entered the camp and medically examined the displaced people we did not come across a single case of cholera, even though dysentery was widespread," Hassan said. He also pointed out that even though Zamzam camp had a reputation of being extremely dangerous, members of the Egyptian medical mission to Darfur were able to move freely inside the camp. "We shall make a point of visiting camps along the Sudanese-Chadian border on our next trip to Darfur," Hassan said.
