Sudan Darfur refugees look to major powers for peace

By Andrew Gray

FARCHANA, Chad, July 26 (Reuters) – Tapping an old shortwave radio with a black plastic casing, Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Karim listens out for any news about Darfur.

Living off handouts in this remote tented camp in eastern Chad, the 48-year-old merchant is one of 10,000 refugees from western Sudan putting his faith in the major powers to create the peace that would let him go home.

“I believe in the United Nations because they have taken on the problem to solve it,” he said.

The refugees here are housed in rows of tents, dirtied by sand and dust, in a sloping sandy landscape dotted by trees some 50 km (30 miles) from the border with Sudan.

Women wrapped in shawls of brightly coloured thin fabrics collect water from taps at distribution points while others cook rations handed out by the U.N.’s food agency over fires.

Cattle, donkeys and goats run around the camp, where puddles have formed in the reddish-brown sand after a recent downpour.

While better off than many still trapped in Darfur, the refugees yearn to return to the villages they were hounded from by feared government-backed horse-riding Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.

Ahmed Adem Ahmed Mizan, a health official working as a schoolteacher in the camp, said people had been cheered by news that Britain could offer 5,000 soldiers for a force for Darfur.

“People heard that on the radio so they are happy,” he said, dressed in an orange shirt and dirty checked trousers.

“If an international army comes into Darfur, and if they can protect the people from killing and beating, I am sure the people can go back.”

PRESSURE MOUNTS

International efforts to bring peace to the Sudanese region of Darfur, where government forces and the Janjaweed have been battling a rebellion since last year, gathered pace on Monday.

The European Union urged the United Nations to consider imposing sanctions on Sudan and African leaders pledged to discuss Sudan peace initiatives at an African Union summit in Ghana later this week.

The United Nations estimates some 30,000 people have been killed and over a million driven from their homes since the fighting broke out last year.

Some 180,000 refugees have already fled Darfur and another 450,000 are within 100 km (60 miles) of the border and could easily end up in Chad.

In the camp at Farchana, Mariam Omar Fadol, a 60-year-old woman with short wiry grey hair from a village west of Geneina, said she hoped the United Nations would bring peace to Darfur.

“It is a difficult life here in the camp because the Janjaweed took our cattle,” said Fadol, who arrived at the camp four months ago and supports her family of more than 10 with food aid rations.

Nearby, a young woman cooking a bowl of porridge over a small fire outside her tent said she did not have enough food for her four children.

“We were living a good life in the village and the Janjaweed drove us away from there.”