Sudan refugees battle for survival on Chad border
By Matthew Green
ABECHE, Chad, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Time is running out to help 100,000 Sudanese refugees trapped on the plains of Chad before food stocks dwindle and hotter weather blasts the already parched land, aid workers warned on Sunday.
Thousands more refugees fleeing attacks by government forces in western Sudan poured across the border in the past week, joining the hunt for food and water in a region where survival is perilous at the best of times.
Many of the refugees are from the Zaghawa ethnic group which overlaps Chad and Sudan and have found assistance from kinsmen offering what little they have to spare, but the resources of their hosts are wearing thin.
Aid workers say they are battling to overcome logistical problems posed by the harsh terrain to move refugees away from shelters of sticks and cloth on the border to camps where they can provide food and water.
“The people helping the refugees to cope with the situation will not be able to help them again,” said Yvan Sturm, senior emergency officer with the U.N. refugee agency.
“The situation will deteriorate definitely. This is the reason we are in a rush to accomplish this move,” Sturm told reporters in the Chadian town of Abeche, about 200 km (125 km) from the frontier with Sudan.
So far the United Nations says it has managed to move more than 800 refugees to a new camp at Farchana, more than 50 km from the border, in the past week.
Aid workers hope to speed up the process and open more camps before the hotter weather in the next few months turns to the rainy season, bringing flash floods that cut roads.
HORSEBACK RAIDS AT DAWN
The refugee crisis in Chad has unfolded largely unnoticed by the outside world, taking place over a vast sweep of desert and savannah where few aid agencies or journalists venture.
Fighting erupted in Sudan’s western Darfur region early last year after rebel groups took up arms to demand an end to what they say is government oppression of black African communities living in the impoverished area.
The refugees tell of attack by Arab “janjaweed” militiamen who raid their villages on horseback at dawn, raping women and abducting girls and putting huts to the torch.
Amnesty International says there is strong evidence the Sudanese government is arming the militia, while government forces have repeatedly bombarded villages.
The escalation of conflict in western Sudan has overshadowed progress towards ending a separate, 20-year-old civil war in the south of the giant country which has received far more media coverage than Darfur.
The refugees are already adept at fending for themselves in the landscape of rocks, sand and scrub, foraging for leaves and berries or relying on herds of cattle.
But the few relief workers who visit the region say the onset of drier weather over the next few months will make staying alive that much more difficult.
“These people survive and forage in the bush where you and I wouldn’t last two minutes, but everything’s shrivelling up,” said Robbie Thomson, a consultant with the International Federation of the Red Cross.
“This has the potential to be a real disaster if the international community doesn’t assist,” he said.