[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 69 (Monday, May 17, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5530-S5531]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CONFLICT IN DARFUR, SUDAN

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to call attention to the 
devastating conflict in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. Over the 
past 14 months more than 1 million people have been displaced by the 
scorched earth campaign waged by the Sudanese armed forces and 
`janjaweed' militia. The number of refugees grows daily. The situation 
is hardly improving, despite recent attention.
  I am pleased that earlier this month the Senate was able to agree to 
S. Con. Res. 99, which condemns the Government of the Republic of Sudan 
for its participation and complicity in the attacks against innocent 
civilians in the Darfur region. But I must caution my colleagues that 
we cannot consider this matter over and dealt with. We must keep 
abreast of ongoing developments in Darfur and continue to look for ways 
to bring an end to the conflict.
  With that goal in mind, I would like to draw to the attention of my 
colleagues an enlightening article by Laurie Garrett, published in the 
May 10 edition of the Los Angeles Times. The op-ed focuses on possible 
consequences of the Darfur conflict which have largely been overlooked. 
Ms. Garrett explains that along with the horrid campaign of rape and 
murder perpetrated by the militia, those rapists and murderers are 
likely spreading disease among their victims and themselves.
  When Ms. Garrett speaks of disease, she does not mean the common 
cold. She is talking about the most vicious and deadly infections known 
to man. Darfur is located in a region of Africa believed to be the 
origin of diseases like HIV, ebola, and West Nile virus, to name only a 
few. The reason we know the names of these diseases is not because they 
stayed confined to remote villages and tribes of Africa. These are 
diseases which grew rampant and spread across deserts and oceans to 
reach the farthest outposts of our Nation and the rest of the world.
  While some may have difficulty imagining the horrors of a conflict 
far away in a remote part of Sudan, it is much easier to imagine 
consequences on our home soil. The possibility is very real that the 
rape campaign in Darfur could take a disease, previously confined to a 
single remote village, and spread it throughout the militia, their 
victims, and the rest of the world. This is a possibility which should 
not be ignored.
  Along with many of my colleagues, I have worked very hard to combat 
the global epidemic of AIDS and will continue to do so until we have 
conquered that horrible disease. Laurie Garrett's warning is that our 
AIDS effort is not enough. We must do everything we can to prevent 
another AIDS or another West Nile from ravaging people around the 
world. Bringing a swift end to the conflict in Sudan will reduce the 
chance of a new and devastating infection being introduced into the 
international population.
  I praise Ms. Garrett for bringing attention to the role of disease in 
the Darfur conflict and I hope that her article serves as yet another 
reminder that we must continue to push for peace in Sudan.
  I ask unanimous consent that Laurie Garrett's op-ed in the May 10 
edition of the Los Angeles Times be printed in the Record.
  There being no objectin, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2004]

                         The Microbes of Mayhem

                          (By Laurie Garrett)

       As the horrors of Sudan's ethnic conflict mount, 
     opportunities for pathogenic microbes--germs that could 
     threaten people all over the world--rise in tandem. War and 
     disease are often a matched set in Africa, with terrifying 
     results: If the fighting doesn't kill you, disease very well 
     could. And without outside help to stop the cycle, the 
     devastating results will only spread.
       In the Darfur region of western Sudan, an estimated 1 
     million ethnic-African Sudanese are refugees, the targets of 
     government troops and horseback janjaweed militia--ethnic 
     Arabs--who are torching and raping their way across hundreds 
     of miles of poor farmland.
       It is almost impossible to overstate how remote this region 
     is. Permission to legally visit the area is rarely granted by 
     the Sudanese government. So scientists know very little about 
     the area's plants and animals, much less its microbes. But 
     what they can surmise is frightening.
       Darfur is just 500 miles north of N'zara, where scientists 
     believe the often lethal West Nile virus (which has now 
     spread to nearly every state in the United States) resides. 
     In 1976, N'zara also was the site of a major outbreak of the 
     deadly Ebola virus. And across Sudan's southern border, 
     Uganda is believed to be ground zero for the global AIDS 
     epidemic. The circumstances of West Nile's spread remain a 
     mystery, but the Ebola outbreak and the AIDS epidemic owe a 
     great deal to the treacherous mixing of war, refugees and 
     microbes.
       In 1976, an international team of scientists was in 
     Yambuku, Zaire, doing battle with the world's first known 
     epidemic of Ebola, a virus that causes uncontrollable 
     bleeding. Ebola was rare, to say the least, so the scientists 
     were stunned to hear rumors of another outbreak in N'zara.
       American disease detective Dr. Joe McCormick drove a Land 
     Rover across more than 400 miles of unmarked terrain to 
     confirm the outbreak. To this day, however, scientists have 
     no idea exactly how Ebola emerged in N'zara, or whether the 
     virus normally inhabits the area. But they do know that 
     ethnic warfare was underway in the region.
       Most likely, infected animals--bats, perhaps--had taken up 
     residence inside buildings in the area, probably as a result 
     of human encroachment into the animals' normal habitat and 
     changes in local weather patterns. It is believed that 
     starving local residents hunted and ate infected animals, and 
     once humans were infected, Ebola spread swiftly, thanks to 
     the dire conditions in the region's war-torn hospitals and 
     clinics, where needles were reused and sterile techniques 
     were virtually unheard of.
       As for HIV, it also can be traced to the 1970s and another 
     ethnic-cleansing campaign in the same region of Africa. 
     Ugandan strongman Idi Amin set his soldiers against tribes in 
     the Rakai district, with rape as a primary weapon. When the 
     conflict spilled over into Tanzania, so did the rape, and 
     when Tanzania's army repulsed Amin's forces, it carried out 
     its own campaign of rape in turn. As it happened, however, 
     another form of revenge spread along with the rape: HIV.
       The genetic history of HIV shows that the virus made its 
     first leap to our species from a primate--probably a 
     chimpanzee--some seven decades ago. But in traditional 
     village settings across Africa, the virus did not readily 
     spread, and less than 1% of any society is thought to have 
     been infected before the mid-1970s. It took a catastrophic 
     event, like Amin's brutal campaign, to amplify the rare virus 
     into a pandemic.
       Today, as then, a chief horror of the Darfur campaign is 
     the militias' raping of women and girls. They brand their 
     victims' foreheads so that all will know that the women and 
     their potential offspring are tainted. Nobody knows how 
     prevalent HIV is in the Darfur region (Khartoum has never 
     allowed surveys of the area). In the Muslim north, surveys of 
     pregnant women four years ago revealed that 3% of them were 
     HIV-positive; a N'zara-area survey found infection rates 
     twice as high. It isn't unreasonable to suspect that the 
     current Darfur ``ethnic cleansing'' campaign is spreading the 
     disease, not only among the people of Darfur and their

[[Page S5531]]

     janjaweed rapists but also among refugees in camps in 
     neighboring Chad. It is equally reasonable to posit that some 
     other previously obscure sexually transmitted disease could 
     be amplified to epidemic proportions via the bodies of the 
     women of Darfur.
       And there is yet another chapter in the region's disease 
     history that has a bearing on what's happening in Darfur. Ten 
     years ago, the world stood by as hundreds of thousands were 
     murdered in Rwanda and thousands more died in the refugee 
     camps. Initially, overwhelmed local medical workers believed 
     that the disease causing many of the deaths was cholera. But 
     it wasn't chiefly cholera that ravaged the refugee camps; it 
     was shigella, bacteria that cause dysentery. Amid the ongoing 
     violence and the chaos of the camps, black market antibiotics 
     were taken indiscriminately. Instead of curing the bacteria, 
     the uncontrolled use of antibiotics created a brand new fully 
     drug-resistant strain that still plagues Africa.
       Surely it is in our collective interest, in light of this 
     sorry history, to pay heed to those who implore us to save 
     Darfur, to stop the rape, to resettle the refugees, to end 
     the chaos that breeds disease. Even if we cannot find Sudan 
     on a map or have no room left in our hearts to bear witness 
     to another war, we surely understand that deadly microbes are 
     our problem, as well as theirs.

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