Sudanese refugees slowly make the long trip home

Feb 21, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — On the northwest edge of Khartoum stretches a vast, makeshift suburb of huge white tents, streaked red by sandstorms and filled with Sudanese refugees who are finally on their way home.

“I’ve had it with Khartoum, that’s why I’m going back to my home in Karko,” Khadijah Hammad said, referring to a town in the southern Kordafan region, though her words sounded spoken as if to reassure herself.

The small, veiled 53-year-old seemed a bit lost amid the clamour of Dar al-Salam camp’s departure centre as workers loaded trucks with rickety furniture and plastic crates filled with people’s possessions.

Hammad is one of four million internally displaced people in Sudan, most of whom are from the south, in addition to half a million foreign refugees in the country.

One quarter of the initial four million displaced have returned to their homes since the signing of a peace accord two years ago, according to UN estimates.

But after more than two decades of civil war between Sudan’s north and south ended with a peace agreement in January 2005, the process of getting Sudan’s refugees and internally displaced to return home again is painstaking and slow.

Even as a new civil war has broken out in the western Darfur region, displacing another two million people, the fallout from Sudan’s earlier 20-year national nightmare is only just beginning to be addressed.

Mario Yavolaj of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which works with the UN, described the complexity of the return operation, requiring “coordination on three levels, including the federal government, the government of the south and local authorities.

Since the return is voluntary, he explained, there has to be some structure in place, including health and education services that were either destroyed in the war, or in many cases, didn’t exist to begin with.

International institutions are working with local government and civic groups to try to set up services for people making the long journey back to their own homes.

Before they even begin, though, they must overcome a hurdle or two right in the Dar al-Salam camp, beginning with a medical checkup for all prospective travellers.

“Some are taken aside if they have a serious disease,” said physician Shaza Sherif, standing at the door of her clinic which consists of two large white tents.

For those deemed fit to make the journey, supplies are given out, including food rations, jerrycans for water and mosquito nets.

There were 500 places in this convoy, while only 1,670 have left Khartoum so far this year.

“We hope there will be an increase in movement in the coming months,” said Amelia Mujagic, of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which works with the UN.

Many people registered to leave did not turn up at the last minute, balking at the thought of leaving a city they have called home for decades for an unknown and war-ravaged land to the south.

“Maybe more will come in the afternoon,” said Mujagic.

Hammad will be travelling with her 23-year-old daughter Halima Hamed Idriss who has pretty much grown up in Khartoum since arriving there with her mother in 1992.

The two women will be journeying to Karko village, deep in the south of the Kordafan region and just north of Bahr al-Ghazal which now forms the border between the central government and the semi-autonomous southern region.

Hammad said her husband lives there, but has long since “taken a younger wife who has given him six children.”

The pair eked out their living in Khartoum with the mother selling vegetables and Idriss running a small tea stand, like hundreds under every tree in the capital, requiring little more than a stove and a few cups.

In exchange for this tenuous lifestyle, they now hope to build a house and farm a small plot of land in their home village.

“We just can’t take it anymore,” she said.

(AFP)