Fear stalks the camps of Sudan’s displaced
May 26, 2007 (AL SALAM CAMP) — In a refugee camp in north Darfur, Sudanese war victims vividly recount horrors suffered during the four-year-old conflict which forced them to flee their homes.
Besides the misery of daily life, many are haunted by fear of being killed simply because of the colour of their skin, of the women being taken into slavery, or of being trapped by the government-allied Janjaweed Arab militia which is blamed for widespread rape, burning of villages and killing.
“The government wanted to end the African presence, to clean Darfur of black people,” said Adam Mahmud Ahmed, from the black African Zagawa tribe, giving his reasons for the conflict which the United Nations says has killed at least 200,000 people.
Ahmed, who was chosen from among the 45,000 displaced living in the camp to be their “Omda” or mayor, stretched out his arm out to show the colour of his skin as he crouched in front of his hut.
Others blame Khartoum’s Arab government for depriving the Darfur region of any economic progress, either for racist reasons or simply by focusing development elsewhere.
Frustration finally formed the spark of revolution, with rebels on February 26, 2003 attacking a garrison in North Darfur. Government forces backed by Janjaweed militia responded with a scorched-earth campaign.
Ahmed recalls how he escaped from Karnawi, in north Darfur, in April 2005.
“The rebels began to attack government positions and the army responded. We were stuck between both,” he said.
Then the Janjaweed militias arrived “killing and pillaging everything in their way before people were able to take refuge in some caves,” said the 42-year-old father of 23 children from three different wives, “four of which were born in the camp.”
Ahmed has lost a dozen family members in the conflict, as well as 500 of his cattle. “Look how I live today… in a hut too hot in summer and too cold in winter,” he said.
Fatima Sharfeddine, a 40-year-old frail woman, from the Arab Zayadia tribe also originates from North Darfur and points the finger at the rebel movement as a cause of the conflict.
She has been living on the edge of the Zamzam camp, near Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, with her husband and five children for four years now.
“When they launched their rebellion, the Tora Boras… said they would exterminate our men and take us, the women, into slavery,” said Fatima, one of over two million Sudanese displaced by the conflict.
By Tora Bora, she was refering to the former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) group headed by Minni Minawi, who in May 2006, signed a peace deal with Khartoum.
The Abuja peace deal was signed under intense international pressure by the Sudanese government but with only Minawi’s faction. There are now at least 10 rebel groups and splinters.
Fatima insists that before the conflict, Arabs and Africans mixed easily and even intermarried.
“But now, men won’t hesitate to kill their own sisters if they marry a man of a different ethnicity,” she said, despairing at the rupture between both communities.
It is the women of both communities who have paid the heaviest price in a conflict born out of African claims to wealth and power, she argued.
“What can the government do to resolve the conflict? Nothing,” said Fatima, sceptical of any reconciliation between the two communities.
The fragmentary peace deal has done little to lower the level of violence and conditions are also dangerous for those who are trying to help the waves of displaced humanity.
Humanitarian workers have been attacked and had vehicles and supplies stolen in trying to reach those in need in the barren Darfur area bordering Chad and the Central African Republic.
“Only yesterday, we lost a vehicle,” said one aid worker in Geneina, West Darfur. The only way around the problem is by use of helicopters, multiplying operational costs.
“We have seen access (to people in need) reduced to the minimum in recent months in West Darfur,” said Fernando Arroyo, head of local United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Theft, violence and the tensions between Sudan and Chad explain some of the recent difficulties, he said.
“We can no longer reach some isolated parts and we can no longer have an overview of the populations’ needs,” said Arroyo.
“Our hope is to have a better capacity to bring aid on a large scale, to have a mechanism to monitor the abuse and eventually prevent it,” he said.
For Warren Wright, who heads the British aid agency, HelpAge International, it is the lingering insecurity that causes the displaced populations to continue growing.
“In my own experience, I have not seen the displaced go back to their villages,” he said. “The displaced population in and around Geneina is ballooning because of the lack of security.”
In West Darfur, 25 international NGOs and five national ones operate on the ground despite the difficult situation, said Arroyo.
UN humanitarian coordinator, Manuel Aranda da Silva, said that despite the May 2006 peace accord, the violence and threat to humanitarian workers continued unabated.
“We assumed that after the peace agreement, everything will be calm,” he told reporters in Khartoum recently.
“Although the (peace deal) was signed, the security environment in Darfur has remained still difficult, and that is no secret,” he said.
(AFP)