In West Sudan, women’s responsibilities put them at risk of rape
BY SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
KALMA CAMP, Sudan, Oct 6, 2004 (KRT) — Every time she walks down the dirt path that snakes toward the woods, Zenab Abdallah’s heart races with fear. In August, she was gang-raped by pro-government Arab militias in her village of Yassin.
She worries that the same militias, who lurk in the bushes nearby, will brutalize her again. Yet she has no choice but to enter the forest: Collecting firewood, by tradition and necessity, is the job of women and girls. Zenab is 14.
“I always think I’ll lose my life on my way to get firewood,” she said. “But without it, we can’t survive.”
In a war the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the rapes by the Arab militiamen, known as Janjaweed, of black African women gathering firewood near refugee camps in Sudan’s Darfur region are especially cruel.
In most African societies, women have the sole responsibility for feeding, clothing and caring for their families, even in desperate times. In Darfur, women bear the brunt of the violence and the burdens of survival brought on by the war.
“They are on the front line of all the threats,” said Nahla Yousif Khiery, a child protection officer for the United Nations Children’s Fund.
There’s no way to overestimate the importance of firewood to Darfur’s refugees. It’s used to cook the grains and heat the cooking oil that relief agencies dole out. It’s sold or bartered in the market to buy soap, medicine, sugar and other necessities that those agencies don’t hand out. It’s used to pay debts and doctor’s bills, and to bring some measure of dignity to shattered lives.
“Impairing their ability to collect firewood affects the only form of empowerment and self-sufficiency that these communities can provide for themselves,” said Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who described the refugee camps as “prisons without walls.”
In Kalma, the women have little choice. Many men are gone – killed, or with the rebels, or off elsewhere, looking for work. Those who remain chuckle when asked why they don’t collect firewood. Some note that the Janjaweed may rape the women, but they are likely to kill a man.
“The death of a man means more than the rape of a woman,” said Sheik Ismael al Gali, a refugee leader.
Every day, Fawzia Ali, 27, with three children and a husband searching for a job in the capital, Khartoum, picks up her ax and takes the dirt path toward the forest, five miles from the camp.
Once there, she walks gingerly on thin sandals through thorny bushes. She finds a tangle of tree branches, grabs one and begins hacking with her calloused hands. She strips off the outer bark and splits the branch in two.
She does this again and again until she has enough firewood to cook and to sell in the camp’s market, in bundles for 40 cents to $1. She’ll buy okra, tomato paste and onions with her earnings, she said.
On this day, there’s more pressure. The holy month of Ramadan starts in mid-October, a time when Muslims fast every day.
“I have to save up firewood for Ramadan,” Ali said. “There will be a lot of hunger and thirst. I will be too weak to come here every day.”
Ali doesn’t feel safe. Across a dry riverbed a few yards away is more thick forest, but she won’t go there – she heard two girls were raped there. She wears a “hijab” – a leather charm stuffed with pages from the Quran, Islam’s holy book – for protection. When a visitor arrived, she hurriedly ripped the steel ax head from its handle and tucked it inside her blouse.
“I’m afraid,” she explained. “Sometimes the Janjaweed takes the ax. Then how will I feed my children?”
There’s very little protection for women. Police officers assigned to the camp seldom patrol the areas where women collect firewood. Relief agencies don’t provide firewood or portable kerosene stoves, which would reduce the need to enter the woods. Government officials in the camps denied that anyone is raped.
Medical workers from Doctors Without Borders, a Dutch relief agency that runs a clinic in Kalma and in nearby Kass, said they treated 20 to 30 rape victims as young as 12 each month. And those are just a fraction of the cases, relief officials said. Most rapes are unreported and untreated; women don’t trust the police and feel stigmatized by the crime.
So the women and girls of Kalma watch out for one another. Last week, five girls – ages 16, 15, 13, 12 and 11_ walked together on their search, leaving their tents at 7 a.m. and returning seven hours later with bundles of firewood on their heads.
When a battered Land Cruiser approached them, one girl broke out crying. In numerous Janjaweed attacks across Darfur, survivors have described seeing Land Cruisers with uniformed soldiers.
Her friends calmed her, reassuring her that she was safe. It was a “hawaja” – a foreigner – they told her.
“We protect each other from the Janjaweed,” said Sumia Hassan, 11, a precocious girl with a gleaming smile. “We always walk a bit distant from each other, so we can look out for each other all the time.”
“And when we chop wood we look in all directions,” chimed in Hawa Bushar, 13, speaking with a confidence that comes from practice.
Zenab’s mother, Fatna, worries that every time she sends her daughter to fetch firewood, her biggest fear could come true.
“I’m afraid they’ll repeat it,” she said, her wrinkled face long and grim.
Zenab never reported the rape. She’s never seen a doctor. When she described how four or five Janjaweed brutalized her that August day as they called her “the daughter of a dog,” tears filled her eyes.
But if Zenab doesn’t fetch the firewood, the whole family will suffer. The attack on their village separated them from her father, and he hasn’t been seen since. Her sister, Hawa, is 10. Her brother, Hamid, is 7. And her mother is too feeble to carry wood.
“It’s our custom that women are supposed to collect firewood, not the men,” Zenab explained.
“She’s the only one who can go,” Fatna said.