Death and sorrow stalk Sudanese across border

By SOMINI SENGUPTA, The New York Times

BAHAI, Chad, Aug 20, 2004 — Under the wide arms of an acacia tree, Khadija Adam Ahmed, 47, recounted the events that drove her to search for refuge: how Sudanese soldiers stole her herd of 75 cows during an attack six weeks ago at her village’s well; how they shot at her feet to keep her from running, then blocked the road to the refugee camps across the border in Chad.

Still, in the dead of night, Ms. Ahmed and 30 families fled their village near Amborou, inside the war-cursed western Sudanese region of Darfur. They walked around the hills, evaded the soldiers and marched through the mud until they were finally able to lie down at peace under the desert shrubs on the Chadian side of the border.

At the mouth of a sprawling refugee camp called Oure Cassoni, Ms. Ahmed stood Wednesday afternoon with dozens of others, mostly women and children, with more children on their backs, all trickling in in the same way, all hungry for a tent and a bag of ground corn.

In the last few days, United Nations officials say, hundreds of new refugees from Sudan have poured into the already overwhelmed camps in Chad. Some, like Ms. Ahmed, sneaked around Sudanese soldiers and their allied Arab militiamen. Some were driven out by fresh fighting. Others have emerged from mountain redoubts, drawn by the promise of shelter and food as their own rations have run out.

This latest influx, though smaller than the flood in the early months of this year, is an alarming barometer of the continuing violence inside Darfur. Even after the United Nations Security Council on July 30 imposed a 30-day deadline on the Sudanese government to restore stability in Darfur or face unspecified sanctions, United Nations officials here, relying on accounts by refugees, have been documenting new attacks by the Sudanese military and their proxy Arab militias, the Janjaweed.

On Aug. 6, these officials said, Janjaweed forces attacked a displaced people’s camp near the Darfur village of Ardjah. On Aug. 10, the agency said, cargo planes dropped bombs on a section of the Djabarmoun mountains commonly used as a hiding place for villagers trying to flee the fighting. Over the weekend, refugees in Chad reported seeing some 400 Janjaweed on horseback just across the Sudan side of the border near a town called Senete. The next night, two Sudanese men on horseback crossed into Chadian territory and killed four young men, all refugees from Sudan, perhaps, agency officials said, on the suspicion they were rebels.

The war in western Sudan, pitting the Arab-led government against black Africans in Darfur, was sparked in February 2003 by a guerrilla movement demanding greater political and economic rights for black Africans in the Darfur region. It has driven around 180,000 Sudanese refugees, nearly all of them black Darfurians, across the border into Chad, and left thousands of others displaced inside Sudan.

Sudan is under mounting international pressure to rein in the Janjaweed and restore security to Darfur. The Bush administration has pushed the United Nations Security Council to proceed with imposing sanctions against Sudan.

[On Thursday, Sudan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said he was confident his government would be able to prove to the United Nations it has made progress in protecting people in Darfur, Reuters reported.]

The African Union, the organization representing African states, is in the process of sending monitors into Darfur to oversee the cease-fire signed in April, along with a smaller number of soldiers to provide security for the monitors. Nigeria’s president, meanwhile, has received legislative approval to contribute up to 1,500 soldiers to a peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Under the aegis of the African Union, peace talks are scheduled to begin next week in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, between Sudanese government officials and their two rebel foes, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement.

But, according to the refugees’ accounts, peace remains an illusion.

Hawa Hassan Ahmed, 29, said she came to the Oure Cassoni camp after her mountain hideout in Northern Darfur was attacked by the Janjaweed. Her 6-year-old son was shot and killed before her eyes. Her 4-year-old son had his throat slit. She escaped alone on a donkey provided by a cousin. The Janjaweed, she said, echoing the reports of other refugees, were tracked by Sudanese military planes hovering overhead.

It was the second such attack Mrs. Ahmed had survived. The first time, last January, when her village of Amborou was stormed by Sudanese soldiers and militiamen, her father was killed.

Khadijah Ahmed, standing under the acacia tree outside Oure Cassoni, survived that same attack, and left only after the 75 cows that formed the source of her livelihood were stolen by soldiers. Although the village chief announced food and relief supplies were on the way, members of her family were threatened with rape, she said. She took to the hills at night and fled.

For many, the refuge they have found in the camp has not turned out to be such a relief.

Malnutrition and disease stalk the refugee camps. A study in June by the United States Centers for Disease Control found malnutrition was running at a rate of 38 percent among the children under 5, nearly four times what the agency said was normal for refugee emergency situations.

One camp south of here, Breidjing, is packed with 35,000 refugees, more than three times its capacity. Several weeks ago, frustrated by water shortages and overflowing latrines, refugees in Breidjing rioted, demanding better services.

Another camp, further south, Goz Amir, has seen a rash of jaundicelike illness, and health workers say they fear cholera outbreaks. Refugees at Oure Cassoni buried a woman of 26 in the desert the other day. She had fallen ill, they said, and there was no clinic nearby to treat her.

United Nations officials, under criticism for inadequate planning for the refugees, say their efforts to supply water and relief supplies to the middle of the Central African savanna have been foiled by bad weather and difficult terrain. The rainy season has come to these inhospitable outposts of eastern Chad. The formerly dry riverbeds that crisscross the plains are now flooded for days at a time.

“We are literally bogged down in the sand and mud,” said Craig Sanders, emergency coordinator for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Chad.

Agency officials say they are bolstering their presence on the Sudan side of the border to monitor reports of fresh fighting and prospects of new refugee arrivals. “It’s clear, just from the reports we are getting from refugees and others, there are attacks that seem to be continuing,” Mr. Sanders said. “The conflict does not seem to be over.”

Inside a tent at Oure Cassoni sat the camp’s most fragile, most acutely malnourished children, their mothers waiting for cups of fortified milk. The journey from Sudan was so long and arduous, the mothers said, they arrived with little. Their animals were stolen or died along the way. There was no milk left for the children, no meat for themselves.

A mother with a newborn girl said she had no milk in her breasts to give her child. Another mother, who had spent six months along the border, sat beside her son, who was crippled by diarrhea. A 9-month-old baby brought in last week, weighing barely 9 pounds, died within two days.