Despite Appeals, Chaos Still Stalks the Sudanese

[gottaB]

By MARC LACEY

Published: July 18, 2004

NYALA, Sudan, July 14 — Two weeks after Colin L. Powell and Kofi Annan visited this part of Sudan in the hope that the glare of diplomatic shame might arrest a human crisis, conditions are still miserable.

Days after the American secretary of state and the United Nations secretary general ended their tour, witnesses said, gunmen stormed a girls' school in the desert region of Darfur, chained a group of students together and set the building on fire. The charred remains of eight girls were still in shackles when military observers from the African Union arrived on the scene.

That is a gruesome reminder of the kind of violence that the Sudan government has promised to stop by reining in the Janjaweed militias that it once encouraged when the government's focus was on quelling a civil war that swept Darfur. But since the visits, killing and raping continues, and health conditions are more dangerous.

Despite Appeals, Chaos Still Stalks the Sudanese....