Threat of forced return looming in Darfur

The "main message" from local authorities in Darfur is that the state’s hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) will have to go home "soon", according to relief workers. On 1 July, the Sudanese interior minister and government’s special representative for Darfur, Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn, told reporters in Northern Darfur that it was "most important" to get people to return to their villages. Each state - Darfur region has three - had its own plan of return, he said. But humanitarian workers fear that a forcible mass return of some 1.2 million IDPs in Darfur could result in enormous fatalities. The planting season ended two weeks ago, the IDPs had no food stocks, and they were already weakened from the lack of food aid, an aid worker told IRIN. Their villages, which had been burned to the ground by government-allied Janjawid militias, who had also poisoned many of their wells, were simply uninhabitable, the aid worker added. "The government wants them to go home, the UN wants them to stay," said another aid worker. "There is no food [in the villages]: they will go back to die." If they were forced to return, they would have no food sources for at least the next 15 months, until after the next harvest in autumn 2005, he continued. They had lost any animals, seeds or farming tools they possessed to the Janjawid looters. Equally important, it would be impossible for aid agencies - which have not yet managed to distribute enough food in the IDP camps - to provide food in each of the hundreds of villages from which the people had fled, IRIN was told. The countryside of Western Darfur has been all but emptied of its inhabitants by Janjawid militias, by burning their villages and looting everything in sight, IRIN learnt. Beyond the capital, Al-Junaynah, large towns with big brick buildings are visibly empty - burned black, covered in ashes, with the odd cooking pot or shoe left behind in haste. About 600,000 people in Western Darfur were forced to flee. They represent half of the total number of IDPs in the Darfur region, which is bigger than France. Some, such as those living in a camp north of Selea, Western Darfur - which had about 1,500 residents until 14,000 IDPs camped on its doorstep - have sought refuge just a couple of kilometres away from their former homes. PROMISES GREETED WITH SCEPTICISM The government of Sudan signed a communiqué last week with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan guaranteeing that it would "immediately" disarm the Janjawid and other "armed outlaw groups"; ensure that all movement of IDPs back to their homes was effected in a "truly voluntary manner"; and undertake "concrete measures" to end impunity and investigate all cases of ceasefire violations. But sources working in Darfur say little has actually been done to match what they describe as "rhetoric". Local sources told IRIN that the Janjawid were simply being incorporated into the army and the paramilitary Popular Defence Forces (PDF), to officially remove them from the public eye. The UN has also received reports of the same tactic in recent weeks. It was being used to "officially" disband the militias, a relief worker told IRIN, but was in fact being applied to afford them impunity, legitimacy, official protection and freedom to persist with their attacks on civilians and looting sprees. "They can be PDF by day and Janjawid by night," he said. The government has accepted responsibility for providing "security" in the whole of Darfur. Yet Janjawid - the main perpetrators of the attacks against civilians - can be seen moving freely in and around Al-Junaynah, where they reportedly have a base between the "camps" of Durti and Ardamatta, as well as a number of "checkpoints". Often in army uniforms, they are employed to "protect" the town from rebel attacks, much as the army would, an aid worker told IRIN. This also means that displaced men are effectively prisoners in the camps - unable to leave for fear of being shot, while the women are being sent out to forage for firewood, thereby risking beatings and rape. In some camps, IDPs had resorted to sending out older or unattractive women, but even that was not protecting them, an aid worker told IRIN. In a normal year, the Janjawid, who originated as a band of Arab nomadic fighters which was then joined by a hodge-podge of criminals, hangers-on and bandits trying to get rich quick, move north during the rainy season; but this year they were staying to "guard" Al-Junaynah, local sources told IRIN. A local official in the town told IRIN that the Janjawid, outlaws and rebels in Western Darfur had been asked to hand in their weapons, and that no charges would brought against them if they complied. But aid workers fear that Janjawid will surrender some "token" weapons, after which local authorities will be given a directive from Khartoum to send the IDPs home en masse. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il told reporters in Khartoum 10 days ago that the process of return would start once more police had been deployed to the region, and the Janjawid dealt with. "We think that if we have more police there to secure the area, and if we have more actions to try to [rein in] the outlaws and the Janjawid and the militias, and if there are talks between the government and also the local leaders, it will bring confidence to those who are in the camps. And it will bring those who are in the camps back," he said. Interior Minister Abd-al Rahim Muhammad Husayn announced on Sudanese government-controlled radio on 9 July that 86 percent of the IDPs had already returned to their villages. Ten days ago he told reporters that his "main duties" were, among other things, to secure and protect the people of Darfur and to "secure the villages" so that people could return home. But the IDPs themselves, who uniformly say they will not go home unless they feel safe to do so, have little faith that the government is acting in their best interests. Fatumah, an old woman in Zamzam camp, about 17 km south of al-Fashir, the capital of Northern Darfur State, told IRIN that some people who had already gone back to their homes were then attacked a second and even a third time by Janjawid. "In places like Korma they were promised security, and then when they went back there were more attacks," she said. The only reason for the authorities wanting to send the IDPs home would be to remove them from the public eye by emptying the camps as a public relations exercise, said one aid worker. Doing so would be disastrous, said another: "As bad as the conditions are in the camps, fixing them is more realistic than fixing conditions in the villages."