Desperation on both sides of the frontline

The vast and dusty slope was littered with brittle shelters. Kalashnikov-toting rebels, their necks weighed down with leather bullet-protecting juju pouches, hovered in the background. A white-sleeved arm reached out from beneath the shadows of one matchbox dwelling and summoned the passing ‘khawaja’, or foreigner, closer. In a raspy Arabic voice, the old man pointed to the five inhabitants languishing in the tiny space. One 28-year-old woman called Hawa, her rib cage protruding from her chest, sat vacant-eyed with a listless and shrunken baby in her lap. A two-year-old girl lay asleep in the dirt beside her. The mother pleaded, touching her empty breasts. Although the khawaja did not understand their words, the message rang loud and clear: "We are starving." A Sudanese nutritionist working for the NGO Action Contre la Faim was immediately called to the site. He whipped out a white, plastic measuring stick and wrapped it around the little girl’s arm. Swarms of mothers materialized cradling young children with undersized limbs. The nutritionist rapidly jotted down ages and measurements. The clock was ticking and the humanitarian assessment team - the first to visit this Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) swath of territory - needed to get an accurate snapshot as quickly as possible. As the humanitarian community’s capacity grows and political obstacles tumble, agencies are increasingly pushing into SLA territory to assess the needs of tens of thousands of displaced civilians, many of whom have been surviving on foods and handouts from host communities. A recent World Food Programme-led assessment in the South Darfur SLA area of Muhajaria east of Nyala found and registered some 35,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), many of whom claim they fled their villages in May and June. The French NGO Solidarite is following up with food distributions and other interventions. The visit to Marla in early October was one of two stops on the day’s schedule to assess the needs of thousands of new IDPs in this besieged area of Darfur, a three-hour drive through rough savannah south of Nyala. Led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the next visit on the joint assessment team’s itinerary was Saniafandu, located a few kilometers southeast of Marla along the defunct railway in South Darfur. Although just a short bone-jarring drive away, Saniafundu is in another world. Yet the suffering is the same on either side of the shifting and invisible frontier. Civilians caught in the crossfire of ongoing hostilities continue to be driven from their villages by what residents describe as Janjawid militias and government forces. On both sides of the frontline, thousands of people have congregated in crowded informal settlements and are in desperate need of water, shelter, food and medicine. "Our mandate is to assist innocent civilians affected by war, no matter which side of the frontline they’re on," said Mike McDonagh, OCHA’s Darfur team leader. "In the past months and especially in recent weeks, we’ve crossed deeper into SLA territory to assess the humanitarian situation and follow up with desperately needed assistance." United Nations staff established first contact with the SLA in late June in North Darfur. A delicate process, the UN and other relief agencies have been gradually expanding into rebel areas in the North and, now, into remote areas of South Darfur such as the Jebel Marra, Jebel Si and Muhajaria. In addition, aid agencies continue to assess newly arrived displaced villagers in government-held areas. As more people like Hawa are found, already thin financial resources donated to provide relief for over a million displaced people in Darfur are becoming increasingly strained. Through a translator, Hawa’s father said that they fled their village of Ladoop located south of the railway after Janjawid militias attacked 40 days before, destroying their homes and crops and looting their livestock, food and other belongings. Hawa and her family arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a cracked lump of brown millet porridge. They have been surviving on supplies provided by generous local villagers in Marla. Two hours later and a half hour down the ‘road’ in government-held Saniafandu, a buzzing crowd of displaced, turbaned sheikhs and other men gather under the shade of a giant tree to tell the khawajas what they needed. First, water, they said. Then food, medicine and shelter. Children dressed in disintegrating clothes and colourfully-draped women gathered in a rim around the tree to watch, as did a few Sudanese military security personnel. While discussions were underway, Ismail Mohamed, his eyes hiding behind large wine-tinted sunglasses, carefully unfolded a piece of paper. Dated 25 September 2004, its lines were filled with jagged English words which read: "I came here a month [ago] from Umm Boum village because Janjawid attacked our village and killed many men and also took all things [from our] homes [even] our clothes. We ran away from our village until we arrived here." Like Hawa, Ismail claims he fled attacks that swept through villages south of the railway line. A primary school teacher, he’d watched his classrooms burst into flames. In his letter to the visiting assessment team, he begged for a job. The sheikhs explained that fighting had been raging between the SPLA and government forces in the areas to the south since 30 July and that the Janjawid had swept like wildfire through their villages, one by one, destroying everything in sight. "There were bodies, I don’t know the number, but there were many," Ismail said. "Even the clothes I am wearing were donated by a friend in the village here, we took nothing with us, no luggage, it was all burned in the fire." Armed with their notebooks filled of fresh data, the assessment team piled back into its convoy of four wheel drives and started on the long journey back to Nyala as the afternoon grew late. Ismail waved goodbye and asked that the khawajas return soon, his neatly folded letter pressed tightly in his hand.