Gone were the more than 1,000 residents of the Meshtel settlement. Gone as well were their makeshift dwellings. Hours before Mr. Annan's arrival, the local authorities had loaded the camp's inhabitants aboard trucks and moved them.

Aid workers who had visited the camp earlier said that before its sudden evacuation, Meshtel was a desperate place in which displaced people lived packed together in makeshift shelters on ground flooded from recent rains.

"Where are the people?" Mr. Annan was overheard asking a Sudanese official who was accompanying his tour of Darfur, the region in western Sudan where the government has been accused of unleashing armed militias on the local population to quell a rebel uprising.

Al Noor Muhammad Ibrahim, minister of social affairs for the state of North Darfur, explained that the camp on Mr. Annan's itinerary no longer existed. He said the government had relocated its residents the evening before, sometime after United Nations officials had paid a visit at 5 p.m. on Wednesday in preparation for a stop by Mr. Annan.

"It's not because the secretary general of the United Nations is here that we moved them," Mr. Ibrahim insisted as incredulous United Nations officials looked on. Mr. Ibrahim said the conditions were too grim for the people there and that humanitarianism, not public relations, had motivated him to act. "We did not like seeing people living like that," he said.

[...]

Mr. Annan bypassed the Abushouk camp, which has become a regular stop for visiting dignitaries and is known widely among aid workers as the "tourist camp" because of its relatively good condition.

Later that day, from a separate Times story:

Mr. Powell huddled under a makeshift tent, buzzed by flies, while Mr. Ismail, the foreign minister, stood by, perspiring in a dress shirt. Relief workers told of the need for more tents and water in the camp, a village built over the past two months to help those who fled or lost their homes to violence. "The people in this camp are being given hope as well as sustenance," Mr. Powell said. But, he added: "We don't want them to stay in camps. We all want them to return to their homes." The camp, Abushouk, is on the outskirts of El Fasher and is considered to be among the best in the Darfur region, with functioning relief organizations and few signs of hunger.

Curiously, this story was posted many hours before the first story I quoted.

Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 for each.

The Day Before:

Kudos to Secretary Powell, President Bush and his administration, and Secretary-General Annan for taking this small, but significant, step. Now let's hope something comes of it. And let's all do what we can to help.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, warning that thousands of people are condemned to die in the strife-torn Darfur region even with an immediate influx of aid, met Tuesday night with Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, Sudan's president, to deliver the blunt message that the situation has become intolerable.

Powell, who is scheduled to visit the western region of Darfur on Wednesday to draw attention to the crisis, said he urged the Sudanese government to halt its sponsorship of marauding Arab militias that have killed thousands of black Africans and made more than a million people homeless.

[...]

Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail, standing next to Powell, insisted that there was "no famine . . . no epidemic of diseases." But he acknowledged that "we still have to do more" because of the onset of the rainy season in Darfur. Sudanese officials have contended that foreign news media are exaggerating conditions in the region. Powell came armed with satellite photos showing whole villages wiped out, and with statistics demonstrating that most camps that are housing more than 10,000 civilians lack sufficient food and water for nutrition.

[...]

U.S. officials have said the Bush administration would use punitive sanctions, such as a ban on travel to the United States or a freeze on assets in the United States, against leaders of the Arab militias, and possibly Sudanese officials, found to have been complicit in the attacks. Powell said that after meeting with victims, he would consult with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan -- who will also be in Sudan this week -- about the text of a U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution that would sharply criticize Sudan's government for failing to halt the violence.

Good steps. Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5.

Other recent WashPo stories: In Sudan, Death and Denial, Sudanese Refugees Told to Stay Silent On Government, Militia Abuses.

Also today, 'We Want to Make a Light Baby'; Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing.

Interviews with two dozen women at camps, schools and health centers in two provincial capitals in Darfur yielded consistent reports that the Janjaweed were carrying out waves of attacks targeting African women. The victims and others said the rapes seemed to be a systematic campaign to humiliate the women, their husbands and fathers, and to weaken tribal ethnic lines. In Sudan, as in many Arab cultures, a child's ethnicity is attached to the ethnicity of the father. "The pattern is so clear because they are doing it in such a massive way and always saying the same thing," said an international aid worker who is involved in health care.

[...]

She showed a list of victims from Rokero, a town outside of Jebel Marra in central Darfur where 400 women said they were raped by the Janjaweed. "It's systematic," the aid worker said.

Nicholas Kristof has continued to be invaluable in pushing the story.

I wrote about Ms. Khattar in my last two columns, recounting how the Janjaweed Arab militia burned her village, murdered her parents and finally tracked her family down in the mountains. Ms. Khattar hid, but the Janjaweed caught her husband and his brothers, only 4, 6 and 8 years old, and killed them all.

[...]

That's where I found Ms. Khattar. She is part of a wave of 1.2 million people left homeless by the genocide in Darfur.

[...]

There is no childhood here. I saw a 4-year-old orphan girl, Nijah Ahmed, carrying her 13-month-old brother, Nibraz, on her back. Their parents and 15-year-old brother are missing in Sudan and presumed dead.

It's all the same story, over and over and over again.

Kristof's blog has been even more invaluable. How to help here.

Readers keep asking me what they can do about the genocide unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, or who they can write to. I’m in the reporting business, not the lobbying business. But for those readers desperate for some ideas, here are some that have been passed on to me:

For readers who want to contribute financially, one of the main aid organizations active in Darfur itself is Doctors Without Borders. Its website is http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org . Another key group is the International Rescue Committee, which was building wells in one of the areas that I visited; its website is http://www.theirc.org .

For readers who want to engage their member of Congress or pursue the matter politically can find more information at this link from the International Crisis Group:
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=2700& [...]

In addition, Africa Action is sponsoring an on-line petition calling for tougher action against the killings in Darfur:
http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/release.php?op=read&documentid=572&

Human Rights Watch has produced superb reports on the crisis here:
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/

Finally, for those who want to stay informed about the crisis in Darfur, there are several websites that have regular updates of news there. One is http://www.gurtong.com , another is http://www.reliefweb.it and another is http://www.allafrica.com/sudan/

This is just a small sampling of what’s out there. Most big aid groups, including all the major faith-based ones, are helping, from Catholic Relief Services ( http://www.catholicrelief.org ) to Friends of the World Food Programme ( http://www.friendsofwfp.org/ ) to World Vision ( http://www.worldvision.org )to American Jewish World Service ( http://www.ajws.org ).

[...]

After scolding Muslims for not doing more to help the people of Darfur, I got this email from Zeeshan in California:

I am a muslim and ashamed to see yet another instance of muslims committing genocide on other muslims. I am originally from Bangladesh, and we are familiar with religion being hijacked for political agendas - we were subject to a genocide in 1971 by the erstwhile ruling West Pakistanis. Darfur is being covered by a muslim charity that I donate to. Here's the link: http://www.irw.org/ or http://www.irw.org/sudan . I would appreciate posting this link as a proof that not all muslims are turning a blind eye towards such a heart-breaking tragedy.

That link is for Islamic Relief, a major charity. I didn’t come across its people on my visits to the Chad/Sudan border, but its website shows it to be commendably active on the issue. There are lots of other Muslim charities – the Islamic obligation to give zakat, or alms to the needy, has nurtured many aid groups – and they do fine work in poor countries. I hope more become active in Darfur. They could play a particularly useful role because they would be more trusted by Sudan and might get better access, and they might also have more Arabic speakers on staff (most of the victims in Darfur speak a tribal language as their mother tongue, and then Arabic as a second language, making communication a big problem).

There's a lot more. Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5. Please do what you can to help; there's much you could do, and even a little could help a lot, be it a monetary donation, a letter or phone call to your Congressional representative (or duly elected representative if you are not a US citizen), a print-out or email to friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, or a post anywhere.

You'd want someone to do it for you and yours.

UPDATE!: Here is what the Secretary of State did today, to follow up:

More here, including more pictures.