Flooded with refugees, a farmer shares land

The terms of Bakit's gift – he told the farmers they could use the land as long as they need it – come with major risks. Sudanese refugees from Darfur belong to the same Zaghawa tribe that live in and around Iriba, and they could easily blend with the local population, staying on Bakit's land forever. It is for this reason, and also because of tree-chopping by refugee farmers on Bakit's farmland, that Bakit's neighbors have become disgruntled. Chadian forestry authorities in Iriba arrested Bakit three times, fining him the princely sum of $240 on charges of deforestation.

"Other people don't like what I'm doing, but that doesn't concern me," says Bakit. "It's my land. Let them take me to the police station. I fear only God."

For Sudanese refugees, the offer of land from a Chadian farmer like Bakit is a rare glimpse of hope after four years of near-despair. Many Darfuris see the Darfur Peace Agreement hammered out in Abuja in June 2006 as a disappointment, since only one of the three main rebel groups – the Sudanese Liberation Movement of Minni Minawi – signed the cease-fire with the Sudanese government in Khartoum.

Bakit's personal empathy

"Al-Hajj is an unusual man, but he's a human being, and his context is very different from other Chadians," says Uwurukundo, referring to Bakit.

The Chadian farmer is generous to Sudanese refugees, the UNHCR chief says, because Bakit himself once had to flee his native Chad to Sudan at a time when there was fighting in Chad and peace in neighboring Darfur. When peace came to Chad, Bakit returned, and as a witness to thousands of Darfuri refugees coming to his town, "he sees himself in that context," says Uwurukundo, and wants to give back at least some part of the generosity that he received from Darfuris. "He himself was a soldier who fled to Chad as a refugee, so when he sees these refugees, he sees himself in that context."

Fighting between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels has slackened, but the remaining antigovernment rebel factions have now become so fractured, with 18 splinter groups fighting each other and attacking humanitarian aid groups, that Darfur is as dangerous today as it was when the war began four years ago.

This means that refugees like Haroom Omar, an elderly Sudanese from the Darfur town of Kornoi, must make their future here in Chad, at least for the time being.

"One day, [Bakit] came into our camp and told us, 'I have land, you are poor, you can use this land until you go, or if you stay here, you can keep farming it,'" recalls Mr. Omar, who supports his three wives and 16 children by farming peanuts, okra, sorghum, tomatoes, and watermelon during the three month rainy season that starts in mid-July. "This man is totally different from the other Chadians. Because of us, the government has put him in jail three times."

Baharaddin Ali, a Sudanese refugee from the Darfur town of Kornoi, is another of the 160 farming families to take up Bakit's offer.

Like Mr. Omar, he grows crops during the rainy season, selling what his family of two wives and nine children don't eat. He is grateful for the use of the land, but there is no question that he would rather be back home in Sudan, if there was a cessation of fighting and banditry there. "If the rains are good here, the farming is also good. But the water supply is much better in Darfur. This is a hard place to farm."

"This man's idea is different from the other people," says Haroon Ibra Diar, vice president of the refugee committee at the refugee camp of Touloum, where most of Bakit's farming refugees have come from. "If we had help from international organizations, to bring water pumps, we could farm more land during the dry season."

He looks around him at the barren dust that the refugees will start farming when the rains come in mid-July. "All this land that you see right now would be green with crops."

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