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Sudan Tribune

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FEATURE- A refugee’s cry: ‘We are in prison’

By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

BELA, Sudan, May 19, 2005 — The last time he saw his village, Sheik Haroun Ishag was running for his life. In 30 minutes one morning in December 2003, gunmen on horses and camels slaughtered 37 of his neighbors. They burned homes, stores, the school and the mosque. They stole every cow and goat in sight. They even took the school’s tin roof.

woman_walks_through_a_refugee_camp.jpgNow, there’s nothing here. But the government wants Ishag to move back.

Civil war has driven Ishag and about 2 million others in Sudan’s Darfur region from rural villages into towns and refugee camps. It’s a stark case of ethnic cleansing – sedentary non-Arab African farmers, like Ishag, uprooted by nomadic Arab herders.

Now that the worst violence seems to have passed, it may be safer for refugees to return to the countryside. But the refugees’ fear – of what they’ll face if they go home, and what they’ll leave behind in the camps – promises to permanently shape Darfuri society.

Here in West Darfur, the state government proposes to begin repopulating scores of destroyed or abandoned villages in the near future. Ishag says his people won’t go. “Everyone knows men with weapons are still out there,” says Ishag, 45, who lives in a camp about 15 miles away. “There is a reason why we came here. Unless you remove that reason, we cannot go back.”

Asked to name the reason, he says, “Janjaweed.”

The Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback,” are Arab tribal militias. They took up arms two years ago after rebels from Darfur’s non-Arab tribes, angry over perceived neglect by Khartoum, attacked government installations. The government, dominated by Arabs, armed and directed the militias, whose brutal raids created what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The herders and farmers had long tussled over scarce land and water. But the war has left the nomads ascendant. They graze their cattle in the fields outside Bela, and draw water from the abandoned village’s well.

The displaced farmers are relatively safe in the camps. But many probably will never return to the land. Ishag understands what’s been lost. Once, his people were among the most tenacious and self-reliant on the continent. Now, he says, “We feel we are in prison.”

‘Deep dependence syndrome’

The government of Sudan – accused by the United States of genocide – has in recent months pushed resettlement of villages and reconciliation between Arab nomads and African farmers. The government has given some refugees money, tools and building materials to encourage them to move home. It also is pressing humanitarian agencies to shift services from the camps to the countryside.

In an interview with USA TODAY in Khartoum, Mutrif Siddig, the undersecretary of State, bemoaned “the deep dependence syndrome” in the camps: “If you feel you wouldn’t receive the same food, medical care or education (back home), then you’ll prefer to stay. … We need to provide services and supplies where people can resettle.” But he says the humanitarian agencies’ response “is not good. It might be easier for them to supply people in the camps.”

Some people are returning to the countryside. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says about 20,000 refugees near the Chad border have resettled in about 50 villages in West Darfur since the violence began to dissipate. But UNHCR and the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs say that in most places, it’s too soon for refugees to move. When UNHCR studied 76 villages scheduled for resettlement in West Darfur, it found seven were fit for habitation; the rest were destroyed or abandoned.

Most Darfuri refugees say it’s too dangerous to return home. People who recount the miseries of the past two years with stoic detachment are transformed when the subject shifts to moving home. Eyes widen, arms flail, voices rise.

“No! Not now!” shrieks Asia Mohammed, 40, mother of six, whose village was destroyed last summer. “Khatar,” she says, shaking her head – dangerous.

A month ago, in West Darfur, an abandoned village was burned down. It was apparently a warning to former villagers not to return, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says in a report. In the camps, violence is a constant preoccupation. Stories ricochet from hut to school to well, reinforcing the sense of danger beyond the perimeter.

On a Monday in Otash camp in South Darfur, residents told of three girls who were kidnapped less than 2 miles away on Friday; a young man who was killed by the side of the road on Saturday; two women who were raped behind a hill in the distance on Sunday.

No wonder, then, that the United Nations says a survey of North Darfur refugees last month found 98% were unwilling to return to their home villages. Many camp residents say they won’t move until:

?The Arab militias are disarmed and disbanded.

?The militia leaders and government officials who backed them are punished.

?Victims are compensated.

Most refugees seem to hold little hope the government will do anything. “The international community will have to step in. Otherwise, no one will ever leave here,” says Sadia Mohammed, 36.

Ishag, the village cleric, says refugees have been warned by Arab nomads not to move back to Bela. Asked if he’d reported the threats to the state authorities, he replies, “They already know about them, so we didn’t tell them.”

Farmers say that if they went back to their villages under the status quo, they’d be dominated by Arab neighbors. “They (Arabs) could say, ‘Give me half your crop’ or ‘I’ll bring my cattle through your land when I want to,’ ” says Hawa Hussein, 50, of Deleij camp.

Another factor may hold Darfuris in camps besides the danger outside: the services inside them.

Kalma, the largest camp with as many as 130,000 residents, is crowded, dusty and sometimes unsafe. But it also has schools, water pumps and health clinics. There are programs to feed donkeys (which are vital to farm families, but get short shrift when food is limited), train teachers, give women more efficient stoves so they won’t have to carry as much firewood and give men more efficient plows.

Every day, Kalma looks more permanent. Tents give way to straw huts, huts to mud-brick houses.

“Some of the camps are so well-organized, that the difficulty may be moving people out of them,” says Brian Martin of ACT/Caritas, an aid group supported by Protestant and Catholic churches.

In her village of Tonaco, Khatoum Yousef Omar, 20, spent hours each day walking to and from a muddy water hole. At Kalma, she walks a few minutes to get clear water from a spigot.

Her two children attend school for the first time. UNICEF says that more children are enrolled in school in Darfur now than before the war began.

But there also is a shift in attitude: People famous for their ability to cope with scarcity in the natural world seem increasingly focused on working the camp and aid systems.

‘Life beyond the camp’

Patrick Musibi arrives at Deleij camp as an honored guest. On a recent visit he was presented with a cucumber as long as a cricket bat.

Musibi is a field coordinator for ACT/Caritas, which is providing camp residents with seed and tools so they can raise watermelon, okra and tomatoes on land donated by townspeople. That way, the refugees can keep a hand in agriculture.

But at a community meeting with Musibi, a former Kenyan air force officer, some camp residents seem primarily concerned with getting more aid: tarps for their roofs, mats for their floors, teachers’ salaries (viewed by humanitarian agencies as a government obligation), more salt, more sugar, more pumps – more everything.

When one man asks for a health clinic, Musibi points out the camp already has one. “It only gives first aid,” the man replies.

Finally, Musibi has heard enough. “It’s time to start thinking about a life beyond the camp,” he tells them. “How can we work together to achieve that?” It’s meant as a rhetorical question. He says they’ll discuss it on his next visit. But on the ride back to his office, he admits he’s not sure what their answer to his question will be, or whether they want to answer it at all.

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