Tension rises as Darfur refugees vie with locals
By Silvia Aloisi
IRIBA, Chad, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Fears of drought, dwindling firewood and battles for grazing land in the inhospitable, barren terrain of eastern Chad are souring relations between local villagers and thousands of refugees from Darfur.
When some 200,000 refugees swarmed into eastern Chad, the locals welcomed their terrified ethnic kin from Sudan, fleeing bombings by planes and killings by marauding Arab militias.
Now the tension is acute in the district around the town of Iriba, which has a population of 61,200 and now has some 60,000 Sudanese refugees scattered in surrounding camps.
“Last year, when no humanitarian agency was here, we shared our food, we raised money to buy them clothes, we housed them. They didn’t have anything,” said Issa Moussa, Iriba’s prefect, or local government representative, this weekend.
“But now conditions for the refugees have improved and people are saying: there is this person that you shared your food with, this person that you have helped and now they are better off than you. There is jealousy.”
He said seven people were injured in clashes over food between Chadian and refugee women in September at Iridimi, the same camp where a boy was attacked by an axe-wielding man while his two goats grazed on nearby desert shrubs.
“The man said: why are you coming here with your goats? We need the grass for our animals,” said the boy’s sister Nadeefa Yacoup, who found him lying on the ground with a broken arm.
Nadeefa says she feels safe at the camp, but does not venture outside anymore. The goats now have to make do with whatever they can find to nibble near her refugee tent.
At another camp in Touloum, a refugee woman was assaulted by locals claiming she had strayed on their property.
RAINS FALL SHORT
To make things worse, this year’s rainy season has been unusually light and short with just 90.5 millimetres of rain over the past three months in and around Iriba.
While this means the surging rivers that aid workers feared would prevent them reaching camps have stopped flowing, the rainfall was woefully short of the 250-300 millimetres needed for a good harvest in this impoverished, arid region.
“The locals are also very vulnerable people,” said Sandrine Peillon, protection officer at UN refugee agency UNHCR in Iriba. “After this year’s poor rainy season, there is not enough grazing land, there is not enough food, not enough firewood.”
Outside Iridimi camp, the arid landscape interspersed here and there with sprouting shrubs and thickets, stretches as far as the eye can see. The wadis, sandy riverbeds that fill up with precious water that locals collect, have dried up.
And while refugees in the camps receive food and water handouts from aid workers, the local population is now bracing for disappointing food crops — and growing resentful.
Clad in a white flowing robe and turban, Sultan Bakhit Abderahman Haggar, the traditional chief for the Iriba district, said aid organisations should help locals, not just refugees.
“We are not against the refugees, but we want that those who are looking after them to help us in the same way … we shared our food, we also bought them clothes. Some of them were naked. Now we are asking for some sort of reciprocity,” he said.
“The rainy season was bad and there is nothing in the fields, nothing. The wells are running dry. People are complaining and asking for help against this drought.”
For some locals, the arrival of the refugees has improved their lot. Moussa Haroun, 50, used to herd camels but now he guards water tanks at Iridimi, a 30 minute drive from Iriba.
“A lot of local villagers work in this camp. It’s well paid. I am better off now than I was before,” said Haroun, who lives in a village of mud huts near the camp of 15,000 refugees.
But for Iriba’s prefect, the international community needs to act now, or the fight for land and meagre resources which sparked the Darfur crisis will simply be exported to Chad.
“We are ringing the alarm bell,” said Moussa.