In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors, many in critical condition physically & psychologically

AFTER surviving atrocities in their homeland Sudan and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine. The scarcity of water in the camps in Chad has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm. Read more.

From France24
By Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Dated Saturday, 23 December 2023 - 17:27 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad camps, survivors recount Sudan war horrors

Adré (Chad) (AFP) – Sitting outside her makeshift shelter in eastern Chad, Sudanese refugee Mariam Adam Yaya warmed up tea on some firewood in a bid to quell the pangs of hunger.

Thousands of Sudanese have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

The 34-year-old from the Masalit ethnic group crossed the border on foot after a four-day trek with no provisions and her eight-year-old son clinging to her back.

She said "heavily armed" men attacked her village, forcing her to flee and leave seven of her children behind amid brutal violence that has sparked fears of ethnic cleansing.

Sudan has since April 15 been plunged into a civil war pitting army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Thousands have fled for neighbouring Chad and found refuge in overcrowded camps such as Adre where Yaya has settled.

In the western Darfur region, paramilitary operations have left civilian victims belonging to the non-Arab Masalit group in what the United Nations and NGOs say is a suspected genocide.

In the West Darfur town of Ardamata alone, armed groups killed more than 1,000 people in November, according to the European Union.

"What we went through in Ardamata is horrifying. The Rapid Support Forces killed elderly people and children indiscriminately," Yaya told AFP.

Trauma

Chad, a country in central Africa that is the world's second least developed according to the United Nations, has hosted the highest number of Sudanese refugees.

The UN says 484,626 people have sheltered there since the fighting broke out, with armed groups forcing more than 8,000 people to flee to Chad in one week.

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing 

© Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Formal camps managed by NGOs and informal settlements erected spontaneously have sprouted throughout the border region of Ouaddai.

A traumatised Amira Khamis, 46, said she was targeted due to her Masalit ethnicity and has lost five of her children.

Recovering in an emergency medical structure run by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) near the Adre camp after shrapnel fractured her feet, she told AFP women and young girls were raped.

"They systematically kill all the people of dark black colour," she said.

Mahamat Nouredine, a 19-year-old who is nursing a fractured arm and has lost four relatives in the violence, said the RSF mercilessly hounded the Masalit community before he escaped to Chad.

"A group of RSF followed us to a hospital and tried to kill everyone... they laid us on the ground in groups of 20 and fired at us," he said.

"Their unspoken goal is to kill people due to their skin colour."

'Critical conditions'

The United States and other Western nations have accused the RSF and its allies of committing crimes against humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing.

An estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project puts the war's death toll at 12,000. Almost seven million people have fled their homes, according to the UN.

After surviving atrocities in their homeland and the perilous journey abroad, the refugees are now confronting the looming threat of famine.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm © Denis Sassou Gueipeur / AFP

Yaya said she and her child have "barely" eaten since their arrival in Chad.

The scarcity of water in the camps has generated tensions that humanitarian organisations have struggled to calm.

Gerard Uparpiu, MSF's project coordinator in Adre, said the influx of Sudanese refugees was creating a "worrying" situation.

"We receive them in critical conditions. They are shaken physically and psychologically," he added.

MSF's hospital is surrounded by fencing and constantly monitored by a guard, measures necessitated by the brutality of a conflict that has not spared the wounded.

"They also attacked us when I was being taken to Chad to receive treatment," said Amir Adam Haroun, a Masalit refugee whose leg was broken by an explosive.

View original: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231223-in-chad-camps-survivors-recount-sudan-war-horrors

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Sudan’s Dangerous Descent Into Warlordism

From TIME.com IDEAS

BY KHOLOOD KHAIR AND ASMAHAN AKAM

Kholood Khair is a Sudanese policy analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory. She is now based in London. 

Asmahan Akam is a Sudanese civil society activist currently living in Boston.

Dated Thursday, 7 December 2023 12:46 PM EST - here is a copy in full:

Sudan’s Dangerous Descent Into Warlordism

The burned remnants of an MSF health post destroyed in fighting at Wunpeth village, Abyei, Sudan, August 2023.

Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

Like millions of people from Sudan, we have seen our families suffer in the wake of a devastating war that began in April. No one in Sudan has been spared.

Both of us are lucky to have escaped with our lives but we have relatives who were killed in the fighting, kidnapped at gunpoint, and whose homes were destroyed. We receive WhatsApp messages from family members who are internally displaced, stuck at the borders or, for those able to leave Sudan, living precarious lives in neighboring countries without rights or legal status. 

For the past nine months, the vicious war being fought in our country has been far from the attention of a distracted world. Well before the current Israel-Hamas war came to dominate headlines, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was a mere footnote on the international agenda. And yet Sudan stands on the edge of an abyss.

UNISFA peacekeepers bring wounded Misseriya people and their families from north Abyei for treatment at the Ameth Bek Hospital, August, 2023.Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

Rival bids for power between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the SAF leader, and RSF counterpart Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, underpins the war. Sudan had been run by a council of generals, including these two erstwhile allies, after a 2021 coup brought an end to civilian rule in the wake of the 2019 pro-democracy movement that deposed longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Tensions came to a head on April 15 when fighting broke out in our home city of Khartoum, and it quickly spread to other regions of the country.

Some 10,000 people have since been killed, almost certainly a vast undercount. With at least 6 million people already driven from their homes, Sudan has the world’s largest displaced population, and the number is growing by the day as fighting intensifies.

In Darfur in particular, the situation is alarming. The RSF—which evolved from the Janjaweed militia that earned worldwide infamy during the Darfur crisis of two decades ago—has conducted a brutal campaign that is on the verge of securing full control of the region.

Rampaging across Darfur on motorcycles, horses, or pick-up trucks, the RSF and allied Arab militias have been accused of ethnically motivated killings against the Massalit and other non-Arab communities; indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against civilians; and widespread sexual violence and rape. (The U.S. government recently determined that both the SAF and RSF have committed war crimes, and that the RSF has committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.) In early November, the RSF and its allies reportedly killed at least 800 people in an attack on just one town—Ardamata in West Darfur province.

A senior U.N. official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, wasn’t exaggerating when she said, “What is happening is verging on pure evil.” A group of U.N. experts called “on both parties to the conflict to end violations of humanitarian and human rights law,” but they expressed “specific concern” with the RSF’s “brutal and widespread use of rape and other forms of sexual violence.”

Mariam Hassam, 20, takes a shower using water from a hole in the dry valley on Sept. 20, 2023 in Metche, Chad. More than 420,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to neighboring Chad.

Abdulmonam Eassa—Getty Images

An aerial view of makeshift shelters of Sudanese, who fled the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, in Adre, Chad, July 20, 2023. 

Zohra Bensemra—Reuters

Sudan is a large country, strategically located, and its speedy disintegration is already having spillover effects throughout the Horn of Africa, Sahel, and Red Sea regions. Major refugee flows into neighboring countries such as Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia are ongoing, while the fighting in Darfur is causing fallout across the border in Chad.

Peace talks that concluded last month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia—convened by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and a bloc of East African nations—might have seemed like a positive step toward peace. But it has mostly provided the warring parties with cover for further violence as the U.N. remains gridlocked. The Security Council has not passed a substantive resolution on Sudan since the war began.

Meanwhile, regional powers have picked sides. Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia support the SAF while the UAE, a U.N. Security Council member, backs the RSF in seeming violation of the body’s own arms embargo on Darfur, first enacted in 2004 and just renewed (with a yes vote from the UAE) in March 2023. (The UAE has denied supplying weapons or ammunition to the RSF.)

Awar is sent to hospital in an ambulance from Gongoi IDP camp where she had twins the previous night. She is feeling very weak and unwell and has lost a lot of blood and is still bleeding. August, 2023. 

Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

In the wake of last month’s failed peace talks in Jeddah, the international community needs to step in and prioritize genuine peace talks, a durable ceasefire, increased humanitarian access, and a surge of resources for aid and protection efforts. The U.N.’s Sudan response plan requires $2.6 billion; it is about a third funded.

We, like so many Sudanese, have been forced to flee our country, leaving behind the land and people that we love. The Khartoum that we called home and know is gone. Bodies are piling up in the streets, in some cases eaten by stray dogs. Those who are too sick or weak to move await death as heavy shelling surrounds them.

But our nation is worth saving. There are everyday Sudanese at the forefront of the humanitarian response working to keep communities safe and weaving back the social fabric that this war has torn asunder. We, and they, need the world to join the struggle to end this war before it is too late.

View original: https://time.com/6342732/sudan-burhan-hemedti-descent-warlordism/

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In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

Article at World Food Programme
By Elizabeth Bryant
Dated 24 July 2023 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

‘This is the price innocent people pay for war’ – WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain urges the international community to step up to help the ‘injured and malnourished

Sudanese refugee Hiba from West Darfur, Chad, survived hunger and deadly violence that has swept her homeland. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

They arrive in Chad by the thousands, the vast majority women and children crossing a desolate wind-swept border from Sudan. Some come on rickety carts and vehicles piled high with hastily gathered belongings; others by foot, with just the clothes on their backs. 

Many also bring with them horrific tales of killings and other abuses by assailants they cannot forget.  

“They took everything,” said 23-year-old Hiba from Sudan’s West Darfur region  (her real name has been withheld for her protection). “Money, food, clothes. They even killed relatives, friends.”

Three months of ferocious fighting in Sudan has displaced more than 3 million people, killed and injured thousands of others and fed already alarming hunger numbers, including in neighboring countries. Of those fleeing Sudan, an estimated 330,000 refugees and returning nationals have poured into Chad alone, swelling a refugee population that is already the largest in West and Central Africa. 

“The people I spoke with on the Chad-Sudan border told me absolutely heartbreaking stories of their dangerous journey, and of loved ones they lost along the way,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, during a visit to Chad last week with United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.

WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain during a visit to Adre, Chad. 

Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

“Too many are injured and malnourished,” she added. “This is the price innocent people pay for war – what these people have been through is unacceptable, and the world must step up and help them.”

WFP is rapidly scaling up food and nutrition support, reaching roughly 164,000 new arrivals from Sudan to date, with plans to expand further to reach up to two million people countrywide in the coming months.

In Sudan, WFP has delivered food and nutrition assistance to more than 1.4 million people, despite daunting challenges. But continued fighting and access restrictions by warring parties make it extremely difficult for us to reach the millions more caught up in the conflict. That’s especially the case in West Darfur, where there are alarming reports of atrocities against civilians. 

Women who have fled Sudan's conflict receive WFP food assistance in Zabout Refugee camp in Chad. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

With fears that Sudan’s conflict could escalate further, potentially destabilizing the broader region, support for WFP food assistance in places like Chad – which can help maintain peace and stability – is more important than ever. 

“The global community faces a decision point,” said McCain. “We either act now and stop Chad from becoming another victim of this crisis that has gripped the region, or wait and act when it’s too late.”

Today, the mounting needs far outpace our available resources. In Chad, WFP plans to reach 2 million refugees and vulnerable Chadians with emergency assistance. But we cannot even assist half of them due to insufficient funds.

“In all my years with WFP I’ve never seen crises at this level with such little financing," said WFP's country director for Chad, Pierre Honnorat.

Thousands of conflict-displaced people have ended up in displacement camps in Adre, Chad. Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

Some of the new arrivals are severely injured, some children so malnourished it is too late to save them. 

Meanwhile, seasonal rains in Chad risk cutting off key supply routes for food and other life-saving humanitarian supplies.

“It's no longer about giving them hope or safety,” Honnorat said. “They need to eat every day. The situation is really critical.”

Even before Sudan's conflict broke out, Chad faced soaring hunger. Today, a projected 1.9 million people countrywide are struggling with severe food insecurity during the June-August lean season between harvests. Around 1.3 million children are acutely malnourished, with some of the highest rates in refugee communities. 

Many of Sudan’s newly displaced have ended up, for now, in camps around the eastern Chadian border town of Adre.

Many of those crossing into Chad have been wounded in Sudan's conflict and some children are severely malnourished. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Children chase each other around the newly erected stick-and-tarp shelters that dot a desert landscape recently greened by rains. Women in colorful robes wait patiently for WFP food distributions.

Inside her tent, Hiba cradles an infant daughter as she recalls her family’s flight to safety from West Darfur’s capital of El Geneina, where some of the worst violence has occurred. 

“They did such horrible things,” she said of the attackers, adding, “the most important thing is health and security – and even more important is food.” 

“We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members,” said WFP’s  Honnorat of the new arrivals, roughly 90 percent of whom are women and children. 

“You don't even dare ask that, 'Where are the men?'” he adds.  “You know the answer from others – that often they were killed.”

Abuobida, whose last name has also been withheld for his protection, counts among those men who made it out of Sudan alive. Like Hiba, he is also from El Geneina. He too lost friends and family in the fighting.

“They came to kill people, so they were on the road with motorbikes, with guns and with cars,” he recalls. “They entered houses and they took people’s things.”

During his journey to safety, he saw dead bodies along the roads. Abuobida arrived in Adre last month, alone and destitute. His family later joined him. 

He points to a small sack of sorghum and a pile of clothes inside the family’s tarp tent. “We don’t have anything else,” he said.

’They came to kill people,’  says Sudan refugee Abuobida of assailants in his home region of West Darfur. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Many of those arriving have serious injuries. Children especially are malnourished. The most severe cases are hospitalized, with WFP providing temporary units for a makeshift hospital and medical logistics. But for some of the sickest, it’s too late. 

“Every week, children are dying,” said WFP’s Honnorat, stressing the importance of early malnutrition prevention and treatment.  

As Sudan’s conflict enters its fourth month, there is no reprieve either for Chad. 

“It’s a serious crisis,” Honnorat added, “and the problem is many more people are coming.” 

WFP urgently requires US$157 million to assist some 2 million people in greatest need in Chad and to stabilize a deteriorating situation. 

Learn more about WFP's work in Chad and Sudan click here to DONATE

View original: https://www.wfp.org/stories/chad-sudan-tragic-stories-and-soaring-needs

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