Chadians flee Janjaweed raids in droves – UN

May 18, 2006 (DAKAR) — Marauding attacks by Janjaweed Arab militia from Darfur are forcing 100 Chadians a day to leave their homes, adding to more than 40,000 displaced people in east Chad who are short of food and water, a U.N. official said.

With more than 200,000 refugees from the conflict-torn Darfur region of Sudan already sheltering in U.N. camps in desolate eastern Chad, the rising tide of displaced Chadians is stretching scarce resources.

“They are coming in approximately two trucks of 50 persons per truck a day,” Steve Adkisson, the representative in Chad of the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, told Reuters.

“By the best estimate, there are somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000, with the recognition that the number continues to rise,” said Adkisson, whose agency provides water and healthcare to the displaced people.

The Janjaweed, whose Arabic name translates as “devils on horseback”, are blamed for a three-year campaign of rape, looting and murder against non-Arabs in Darfur, where 250,000 people have been killed and 2 million forced from their homes.

In recent months, Janjaweed raids ever deeper into barren eastern Chad have pushed thousands of people westward, clearing a space by the Sudanese border. A militia attack on Monday some 80 km (50 miles) from the frontier left four people dead.

“I doubt you would find a family among the internally displaced that does not know someone who had been killed … killed in a most violent fashion, witnessed by families and children,” Adkisson said.

“They have been moved more than once. They are really at their limit,” he said, adding children had been badly traumatised by the growing culture of violence.

Chadian President Idriss Deby accuses Sudan of exporting Darfur’s ethnic strife across the border in a drive to spread Arab control and Islam into sub-Saharan Africa. Khartoum says Deby wants to deflect attention from a domestic rebellion.

FOOD ASSISTANCE

Chad, lying in Africa’s parched Sahel belt just south of the Sahara desert, already faces annual food shortages in the lean months before the harvest — one in five children in Chad die before they reach five, due largely to malnutrition.

While this year’s harvest has been good, the situation of the internally displaced is worrying, Adkisson said. Authorities have given them land, but they arrived too late to plant crops.

“In many instances, they weren’t able to bring away their full food stock that they had stored from the previous harvest,” he said. “While food assistance is not currently needed, it is likely to be needed in the next two to three months.”

An April 13 rebel attack on the Chadian capital N’Djamena and May 3 elections — which Deby won amid an opposition boycott — raised foreign awareness of Chad’s problems.

But that has not yet translated into significant donations for humanitarian aid, Adkisson said.

Thousands of displaced people settling around the town of Goz Beida, more than 100 km (60 miles) from the Sudan border, have left locals angrily complaining of water shortages.

A UNICEF worker tasked with seeking alternative water supplies was shot and wounded this month by a man dressed in military clothes who stole her car.

Rising violence forced the United Nations to withdraw a quarter of its personnel from eastern Chad in early April, and Adkisson said the possibility of a full withdrawal of expatriate staff remained — although local staff would stay on.

“The option of full withdrawal must remain on the table if the security situation continues to deteriorate,” he said, adding the Chadian government was aware of the situation.

(Reuters)