Chadians look for refuge in volatile Darfur

Insecurity in southeastern Chad has become so widespread that more than 11,000 people, fleeing militia attacks, have recently left their villages to seek refuge in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, aid workers say.

Since Chadian rebels based in Darfur started attacking government strongholds late last year, Chad has pulled its cash-strapped army back to protect key towns, leaving vast swathes of the border unprotected.

As the army focuses on fighting back the rebels, Janjawid militia groups from Darfur have been crossing the border to loot and sometimes occupy Chadian villages. The UN estimates that more than 50,000 people have fled their homes, scattering throughout eastern Chad and over the invisible line in the sand that separates Chad from Sudan.

"Janjawid incursions further into Chad have brought fear and significantly threatened the civilian nature of refugee camps," UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland told the Security Council on Thursday. "Recent analysis from human rights colleagues of the UN Mission indicates that this may be the beginning of a new phase of violence in which armed groups, militias, rebel groups and the army are intensifying their targeting of the civilian population."

Their resources exhausted, targeted groups find it hard to travel the long distances to the relative safety of the Goz Beida area inside Chad. Many opt instead to flee the 36 km across the border from Tissi to Um Dukhun - despite the prevalence of Janjawid and Chadian armed opposition groups in this area.

In Um Dukhun, a village on the Sudan-Chad border near the Central African Republic, 11,900 people have arrived over the past two months and are living in temporary shelters on the edge of town or are staying with relatives.

"After the Chadian villages were attacked, the people said they fled to the nearest safe spot," explained Vanessa van Schoor, head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Holland in Darfur. "Um Dukhun has Sudanese security forces in place and the new arrivals can get medical assistance. The main thing they are looking for is security and Um Dukhun is stable."

Matthew Conway, spokesman for the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Chad, also mentioned that some people were "profiteering" from the insecurity by charging high prices to move Chadians further inland in Chad. As a result, many ethnic groups - whose populations live on both sides of the frontier and consider the border between Chad/Sudan rather "artificial" - had decided to take their chances in Darfur.

Besides security and shelter, other urgent priorities for the new arrivals include sanitation and food. "We're seeing about 40 percent more patients in our therapeutic feeding programme compared to June last year," van Schoor said. "Latrines are a priority too. There are so many people coming in just ahead of the rainy season, and we are already witnessing an increase in watery diarrhoea in South Darfur."

"The first attack was the worst, there were over a hundred of them," a 25-year-old woman from the Chadian village of Um Ladja - in the Tissi area - told MSF at Um Dukhun. "They scared everyone and rounded us up. They took everything and killed anyone who was in the way. They said that they were going to take all the cows, and that they would kill anyone who went to farm and take his children. We came to Um Dukhun as soon as we could get out, because they kept coming back."

Tania al-Jaff, external relations officer for UNHCR in Darfur, said the UN refugee agency had recently moved 90 new arrivals deeper into Darfur - from Um Dukhun town to a refugee camp in Mukjar. More people would be transferred soon.

"We are moving people away from the border - at their request - for security reasons. Any future unrest at the border will affect these people; they don’t feel secure," she said.

International assistance needed

Djawara village, deserted after Janjawid attacks.

The Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Walter Kalin, warned this week that displaced Chadians are already placing "an overwhelming burden on the local population and support structures" in the east of Chad.

And in a statement released on Wednesday urging the UN and African Union to deploy peacekeepers in eastern Chad at the same time as Darfur, Amnesty International (AI) said: "The Sudanese government is allowing Janjawid militia to attack Chadian civilians across its border with impunity - killing, looting and depopulating land along the border. The Janjawid are targeting virtually defenceless communities - unhindered by the governments of either Sudan or Chad. Effective action must be taken now by the international community - before the situation deteriorates even further."

"It is a very precarious region," Conway observed. "Many of the most vulnerable, particularly the elderly and people with a disability, were not able to move at all. They often lost their support networks and have been left to fend for themselves."

"Although international organisations have recently begun to review the protection and assistance needs of the internally displaced persons [IDPs], to date IDP settlements and camps have received inadequate resources," Kalin warned. As the rains had set in, isolating many regions, immediate redress of these conditions was essential, he added.

"Let us be honest," Egeland told the Security Council. "Humanitarian presence has limitations. In many situations, like in today’s eastern Chad, security is so precarious that the civilians, and often humanitarian staff, need physical protection, which today is virtually non-existent. This is where your role as the Security Council - in defining and facilitating the role and capacity of peacekeepers - is so crucial."

Violence without borders

The situation in eastern Chad mirrors the scorched-earth campaign that ravaged Darfur in 2003 and 2004. AI said it had recorded numerous accounts of killings and looting by well-armed Janjawid militias from across the Darfur border; often accompanied by allied Chadian ethnic groups.

"As they did in Darfur, they have targeted the sedentary farming populations in each area, killing, pillaging, and driving the villagers out," AI reported. Most of the victims were from the Dajo, Mobeh, Masalit and Kajaksa and other smaller sedentary groups.

Janjawid attacks targeting the communities’ livestock began in 2003, but the intensity of the raids increased at the end of 2005.

According to UNHCR, previous waves of displacement in early 2006 had resulted in approximately 10,000 Chadians seeking asylum in Galu (near the capital of West Darfur state, El Geneina), and between 5,000 and 7,000 new arrivals in Habila to the southwest of the capital.

Unlike the Chadians in the far south, escaping villagers usually flee further inland to areas they think will be secure either due to the presence of the Chadian army or the local administration.

At least 42 people were killed when villages along the border with Sudan around Koloy canton were attacked on 3 March. Fleeing inland to Koloy town, the displaced were continuously assaulted, killed and plundered, until 10 days later they fled the area to the regional centre at Goz Beida, AI reported. Goz Beida is the seat of the Dajo Sultan, where a large refugee camp has been established for Sudanese refugees driven out of Darfur since 2003.

Another massive attack by an estimated 1,500 Janjawid occurred on 12 and 13 April and left 118 dead in the villages in the area of Djawara and Djemeze. The resulting displaced are clustered in settlements in Dog Dore and Tiero both near the border and lacking any protection.

"The Janjawid opened fire without warning. They moved steadily inward shooting as they came. The cordon between the two villages meant anyone who fled from one village to another would be killed as well," an eyewitness told AI in Djawara. "The only ones who survived were those who managed to hide behind trees and bushes."

CHAD: As army pursues rebels, militia massacres fill the vacuum