Darfur displaced Arabs say also victims, need help
By Nima Elbagir
GENEINA, Sudan, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Arabs in a camp for displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region say that amidst all the international sympathy for black African victims of the conflict, they have been ignored and denied help.
Aid workers see the Sudanese Arabs as the aggressors in the fighting that has raged for over a year, but the Africans of Darfur do not have a monopoly on suffering, say the displaced Arabs at the camp in Geneina, capital of West Darfur state.
“There were women we saw hacked apart and men who were split open. All this we saw and they say we have not suffered,” said 25-year-old Fatma Mohammed, who left her home near the border with Chad around seven months ago.
The United Nations says that around a million people have been forced out of their homes in the western Darfur region of Sudan by fighting which erupted in early 2003, when two main African rebel groups took up arms against Khartoum.
The rebels and aid groups say Khartoum responded by arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, who looted and burned the villages of African farming communities in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The government denies the charge and says it is working to improve the security situation.
The revolt followed years of low-level conflict between Arab nomadic tribes and black African farming communities in remote Darfur over scarce resources.
The displaced from Darfur’s Arab community fled rebel attacks against their homes in Sirba in West Darfur state near the Chad border around eight months ago but were registered to receive food by aid agencies only in July.
“Registration for food aid for these displaced people was delayed because it took a long time for people in the aid community to actually believe that the Arabs were truly displaced,” said a local aid worker who comes from Darfur’s African communities.
The displaced Arabs live in improvised shelters in the camp but stay in an area separate form those displaced from African communities.
The aid worker said the atrocities attributed to Arab tribal militias made it “very difficult to perceive that Arabs could be victims”.
The World Food Programme began food drops on Tuesday for the thousands around Geneina who are inaccessible by road due to the rainy season. The U.N. agency said the airdrops would continue in the area for at least a month.
“Foreigners ride around in their cars and their translators point us out to them as Janjaweed. We have become freaks to be stared at,” said another displaced Arab.
Under the terms of a U.N. Security Council resolution Sudan has until the end of August to show it has made progress in restoring security to Darfur, otherwise it will face unspecified sanctions.