Any Sympathy I Have Is For The Poor Donkey…

Another in the never-ending story of the 'Guardian' taking out a hankie for refugees:

They were huddled together on the bare floor of an abandoned house – four orphans who had travelled nearly 1,000 miles after having to flee from their home in the city when Sudan’s brutal civil war erupted.Having escaped ferocious fighting around Omdurman, twin city of the capital, Khartoum, they had arrived in Darfur...“But we couldn’t stay, it was too deadly,” says Asrar, 13, sitting beside three of her siblings, twins Mustafa and Mujtaba, nine, and seven-year-old Fatima.

I find I immediately flash on to this comment from one of Tim's regulars. 

 

Outside the house, located in the devastated West Darfur city of El Geneina, another two of Asrar’s siblings were trying to make money for them all to eat: Haroun, 21, working at a mechanic’s workshop, while Abdallah, 15, pounded the streets with a donkey selling water all day.

Poor bloody donkey. There's a recurring advert for a horse and donkey charity on tv, continually begging for money to treat these poor beasts. The day they announce they will use it to hire mercenaries to shoot the owners who mistreat them is the day I'll give them some.  

Asrar and her siblings have been alone since July last year, when their mother, Aisha, died from dysentery at their home in Omdurman. “There was nowhere to go to treat her. She got sick and was gone in two days,” says Asrar. Haroun, arriving back at the house after his workshop shift, adds: “We were devastated when she died.” Their father disappeared before the war started, leaving the house one day and never returning.

Such a familiar story. He's probably tucked up in a hotel in Kent.

Another brother who lives in Libya sent them money by phone to pay a driver to take them to El Geneina, where their parents were from and an elder sister, Israa, 30, still lived.

They paid a driver in advance but he abandoned them along the way. “He left us there with nothing,” Haroun says. “We had already paid him, and we had run out of money, so we had to sell our mother’s perfumes and clothes and survive on beans.”

It's called the Third World for a good reason. 

On arriving in the Darfur city last month, their elder sister could not be found, most likely having fled across the border to Chad. They found her house in ruins and moved into a nearby derelict house that had been left completely bare after being looted. A threadbare carpet serves as their bed. Despite escaping Omdurman, life in El Geneina is also fraught with risk. The city has witnessed myriad war crimes, including one of the worst atrocities of the war – a frenzied episode of violence, rape and looting by the RSF in 2023, in which almost 15,000 people were killed.

Clearly, the thrust of the 'Guardian' article is to drum up sympathy for refugees. Does it work? Not on me.