Terrified civilians hide in rebel-held Darfur
By Silvia Aloisi
FURAWIYA, Sudan, Oct 3 (Reuters) – Adam Gardia is one of just five civilians left in Furawiya, once a vibrant marketplace in a desert valley of northern Darfur, now a ghost town except for a bunch of rebel fighters camping in its ruins.
Everybody else fled in March after Sudanese government planes dropped bombs and soldiers came, looting houses and market stalls before setting them ablaze, Gardia said.
Once they were done, horse-riding Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed descended on the remains of Furawiya to take any goats, donkeys and camels that were left behind.
Gardia, a 75-year-old from the Zaghawa tribe, says he watched all this from a hut made of mud bricks and branches. He could not flee because of his crippled left leg — the legacy of a previous attack by Janjaweed, who beat him with burning sticks.
Some 25 people were killed, including his neighbour.
Furawiya’s population used to swell from the hundreds into the thousands when people still came from afar to its market.
“In the end, there was just me and dogs,” he said, drawing lines in the sand with his finger as he listed the belongings taken from his shelter — sheets, blankets, even his clothes.
A few metres (yards) away lie the blackened remains of burnt-out huts, a charred bedframe, shards of smashed vases scattered on the ground and the skulls of two camels.
The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), one of two rebel groups who say they are fighting for the rights of African tribes in western Sudan, retook the town in April. But that has not brought back those who had fled.
“There are only fighters here,” said Idriss Abdoul Karim, the SLA commander in the town. “Most people went to Chad, others are hiding in the mountains or under trees.”
An estimated 50,000 people have been killed since rebels took up arms last year in Darfur, an arid region the size of France, where African villagers have long vied with Arab nomads for scarce resources.
The violence has driven another 1.3 million people from their homes, mostly into camps dotted around the government-held part of Darfur and in neighbouring Chad, in what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
ATTACKS CONTINUE
Idle combatants, including child soldiers in oversize fatigues, sit in small groups here and there, some drinking sugary tea, others playing a draughts-like game using brown and white stones.
Fear is so overwhelming in the barren, wind-swept desert of rebel-held northern Darfur that no one who left their home dares return.
Rebel commanders say government troops and Arab militias are still mounting attacks, despite a ceasefire and the threat of U.N. sanctions against Khartoum.
Along desert tracks lined with the carcasses of dead animals, village after village lies abandoned and lifeless as people try to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible under makeshift shelters of twigs and cloth, only emerging to fetch water at wells or search for food.
Those who could not make it to Chad or are too frightened to cross the front-line lie low, surviving on wild roots, maize soup and mukheit, bitter fruits the size of olives that have to be soaked in water for days before they are edible.
People in the region around Amaray, a village 200 km (125 miles) from the Chadian border, say government Antonov planes regularly circle overhead.
“I’ll go back only if there is peace, if the planes stop coming,” said Abas Abou Ummo Adam, holed up with his wife and 11 children under a tree fenced with branches.
About 100 km (60 miles) to the west, 23-year-old Fatima has trekked from cave to tree with her 2-year-old daughter for months. Her village, Bishara, was not attacked, but she fled anyway.
“I am not going back, I am staying under the tree,” she said, wrapped in a bright turquoise shawl and riding a donkey loaded with empty jerrycans, looking for water.
“I am afraid of the Arabs.”