Desperation in Darfur A Eugene photographer exposes the many horrors of genocide.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

It is not merely the sights that photographer Paul Jeffrey has brought back from the genocide-wracked lands of Darfur. It is also the sounds.

It is the sound of no children laughing in the village of Bela, its terrorized residents having scurried to displacement camps after Arab militias killed 37 people there.

It is the barely perceptible sound of Fatma Omar's hand aimlessly drawing circles in the sand in the Hassa Hissa displacement camp outside Zalingei. The day before, Omar completed a 15-day trek through the countryside with her four children, having fled the remote farm where militiamen raped her and killed her husband.

And it is the mournful sound of Alyas Adam, a 23-month-old child that Jeffrey found in a ward for malnourished children at a hospital in Garsila. Alyas, in the arms of his mother, Asha Ibrahim Musa, was crying.

"It was like a death rattle," Jeffrey recalls. "I can't get the sound of his crying out of my head. It was a haunting cry. It was like, `This is how I'm going to cry until I die.' '

Jeffrey, who lives in Eugene, has seen more than his share of human heartbreak and hubris in his years as a missionary and photojournalist for the United Methodist Church and international relief organizations. In all, he has documented human misery in more than 40 countries, from Nicaragua to Ethiopia to Sri Lanka.

But Darfur, in the African country of Sudan, is different for him. "Darfur has struck a chord," he says. "This is a tragedy that we can stop - the world can stop - if we take it seriously."

Up to 400,000 people have been killed and another 2.5 million displaced since 2003, when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-led Sudanese government. The government is accused of arming a separate group known as the Janjaweed, whose members are blamed for widespread rapes and killings of civilians.

The conflict is ancient, says Jeffrey, essentially pitting African farmers against Arab nomads who have squabbled for centuries despite their many similarities - dark skin, Arabic language, Muslim faith. "It's the story of Cain and Abel," he says.

Jeffrey calls the situation in Darfur "genocide in slow motion." Unlike 1994's tribal strife in the African country of Rwanda, where more than a half-million people were massacred in a span of four months, the mayhem in Darfur has been more methodical.

Jeffrey, 54, first visited Darfur in the spring of 2005. Between then and his most recent visit, in late July, he says the situation has worsened with ever-more people fleeing to the camps.

"It's like a machine that keeps generating displacement," he says.

The mood in the camps is a mix of despair and hope, he says. On the one hand, there is a minimal guarantee of food, water and shelter. Many children, girls especially, have access to schools that they didn't always have in their remote villages.

But the situation is not so promising for adults, especially young men, who have little to do but ponder a bleak future and nurse their resentments.

"The longer they are in the camps, the harder it is to get back home," Jeffrey says. "Why leave a camp that at least has food and water to go back to a village where all the crops are gone?"

The situation in Darfur has grown increasingly complex, with the two or three rebel groups that existed in 2005 having splintered into nearly 20 groups today. Jeffrey says he went to one Arab village where seven people had been slain the day before - not by Africans but by a competing Arab tribe.

Jeffrey says he faced much more stringent restrictions on his most recent trip.

"The government does not let journalists in," he says. "They don't want cameras around; they don't want their story told. I could not get to freshly attacked villages."

The United Nations recently decided to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur this fall, but with severe limitations on what they can and can't do. Jeffrey says the Sudanese government has "masterfully manipulated" the United Nations, the United States and Europe in resisting international intervention. "They've played us for fools - and we've let them," he says.

Jeffrey says he believes that President Bush genuinely wants to help, but doesn't know how best to do so; the president's recent idea of sending in U.S. troops, Jeffrey believes, would only make matters worse.

Many in the international community believe that a central task now is to get Darfur's rebels to form a united negotiating front. Jeffrey concurs, and says another useful strategy is to keep pressuring China, which buys oil from and sells arms to Sudan.

Compared with two years ago, Americans are much more aware of what's happening in Darfur and more sophisticated in how to push politicians to act, Jeffrey says. But he credits several nonpoliticians - such as syndicated newspaper columnist Nicholas Kristof and movie stars George Clooney and Mia Farrow - for keeping the issue in the public spotlight.

"When politicians fail us, ordinary people need to get involved," he says. "Artists, teachers and librarians are making more of a difference than the politicians are."

Jeffrey says he's grateful to have a home base in Eugene, where his wife, Lyda Pierce, is an associate pastor at First United Methodist Church. They have two children.

In about two weeks, Jeffrey will embark on a two-month tour of Methodist churches and other venues to share his photographs and impressions. The tour includes a talk in Eugene on Oct. 3, sponsored by the Lane County Darfur Coalition.

Jeffrey says it's important that the coalition and similar volunteer groups keep applying whatever political pressure they can muster.

"The condition on the ground in Darfur has deteriorated," he says, "but the environment for advocacy has gotten better. We have to push for creative and positive change in Sudan."

"FACES OF DARFUR"

Photojournalist Paul Jeffrey will give a digital presentation of images from Sudan

When/where: Oct. 3, 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., Tykeson Room, Eugene Public Library, 100 W. 10th Ave. Free.

Sponsor: Lane County Darfur Coalition

More information: www.lcdarfurcoalition.org or 342-8189

DARFUR SLIDE SHOW

See a sampling of Paul Jeffrey's work at www .register guard.com /slideshows