Darfur refugees in Kenya
Darfur refugees in Kenya
Ashley Elliot
“They were boys who attacked us. Boys as young as thirteen.”
Fatimu appears to choke on her anger as she speaks. Sheltering from the relentless Kenyan sun, the refugees crowd around her quietly as she describes a raid by Janjaweed militiamen on Jkana in the Darfur region of Western Sudan.
“Janjaweed raped and mutilated six of the youngest girls,” Fatimu continues. “Then they murdered them all.”
The attack occurred two months ago, long after the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed in May.
Fatimu and the others are recent arrivals at the Kakuma refugee camp, on the Sudanese border in northwestern Kenya. Besides the aid workers present, no one knows that four hundred Darfuris are hiding amongst 95,000 other refugees from all over the Horn of Africa. The Darfuris have traveled hundreds of miles across southern Sudan, and their journey has been dry, dusty, fiercely hot, and dangerous.
The Khartoum regime does its best to prevent its black African citizens leaving, and many have died trying, usually shot at checkpoints. Some disguised themselves and were lucky. Others came by train from Nyala to Rhad, then by foot to Kuwd. From the Nuba Mountains, local people helped smuggle them across the border at Lokichoggio.
A young man, Abdallah, explains that they could not approach the numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in Darfur for help.
“They are scared. Some of their workers have been killed. When foreigners visit, they are taken to the towns, but never the villages, never to places where the attacks happen.”
Abdallah pauses. “And the NGOs employ local Arabs with Janjaweed connections. If we talk to NGOs, the Arabs will know. They will kill us afterwards.”
Sulamin, the group’s leader, starts to speak. “The Janjaweed are responsible for the killing in Darfur. The Government supports them. It wants Sudan for the Arabs, so they use the Janjaweed to drive us from our homes”.
Sulamin denies that Khartoum is merely responding to the rebel attacks that began in 2003, and he pours scorn on the theory that the Sudanese authorities do not control the Janjaweed.
“All my life black Africans have been discriminated against. Arab tribes were torching our villages long before 2003. In the early 1990s attacks were common and the government never intervened. Then in 2003 the government began to organise on a large-scale, and they used the Janjaweed.”
When Sulamin is asked who witnessed the raids, the men and women around him raise their hands. They wait their turn to speak in a polite and orderly manner, in marked contrast to the scenes they describe.
“Habila, Zawia, Mogrne, Drgl, Touls, Trbaba, Kokar….” The list of village names is followed by the details: numbers of dead, location, date. A woman from Kanara describes the killing of 48 people in 1999. Another was widowed in Mule where her husband and 64 people were murdered in 2003. In Kegno 56 people were killed.
A tall, thin man waves his mutilated hand, missing a thumb and forefinger. He was maimed in a raid on Kudle in 2003 that left 37 dead and 93 injured. The young people, and the educated ones suffer the most, he explains.
“If you are a teacher, you will be killed. If you help others escape, they will shoot you.”
A boy describes the rape of his sisters, and how he was forced to watch. Male babies are removed, ripped from their mothers’ arms, he continues. Young men are taken too.
The refugees’ testimony concerns events that have happened recently, despite the much heralded peace agreement, and despite the presence of 7,000 African Union (AU) monitors.
Mention of the AU prompts a young woman to raise her hand. She talks rapidly, spitting each word and staring at the ground in front of her.
“The Janjaweed attack and AU troops do nothing. At the camp in Sisi, 34 of our women were abducted. We reported this to the AU and asked them to help, but they did nothing. Sisi is a government-controlled area. The officials saw it happen, but they didn’t say a thing. After the Peace Agreement, the Janjaweed attacked IDP camps. The same day the peace was signed the Janjaweed attacked Zalagi. In July they attacked Grada, and many people were killed.”
The refugees refute the theory, often mentioned by British diplomats, that rebel groups are equally responsible for the raids.
“The Janjaweed come on horses, and the planes and helicopters attack simultaneously, backing them up, supporting them. How many rebels have planes? How many have helicopters?”
Their only hope, they say, is Kofi Annan’s proposal for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur.
“We pray it will happen, it is the only way to stop the killing.”
In the meantime, they know they are trapped in Kakuma. Fatimu, surrounded by twenty or so other women, all widows, says life here is hard. Nobody understands their Arabic, malaria is rife and their children are sick. Daylight and nighttime hours blend into n exhausting cocktail of boredom and fear. At night men from the local Turkana tribe enter the camp: they have killed two Sudanese refugees in this sector this week.
Yet Fatimu’s group know they are safer than the refugees in IDP camps in Darfur and Chad, now targeted by the Janjaweed. Still, they ask, how long must they wait for the blue helmets in Darfur?
That night, in the dim World Food Programme staff room nearby, a small, flickering television broadcasts gritty images from Lebanon. Every night for weeks the world’s leaders and media correspondents have lined up to discuss the urgent need for ceasefires and UN peacekeepers. Everyone agrees something must be done for Lebanon. But not, evidently, for the people of Darfur.