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| Black tribal leaders in Kerfi talk about Arab attacks. Matthew Clark |
Darfur conflict spills into Chad
The UN is expected to vote Tuesday on a French plan to send peacekeepers to Chad.
from the September 25, 2007 edition
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Others question whether the international troops will be enough help.
"Any international force must be able to act, not just watch, like [they do] in Darfur," says Mohammed Ali, the secretary general of Darsilla, in reference to the outmanned 7,000 African Union troops in Darfur, which are not allowed to engage warring factions in combat. In July, the UN approved sending a force of 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, but they are not expected until next year.
The French draft says that UN blue helmets in Chad would be "authorized to take all necessary measures" to protect civilians, refugees, and humanitarian relief workers and convoys.
Life in the eastern Chad city of Goz Beida was calm before last fall's clashes, says Mr. Ali. But now the influx of Chadian refugees – and the arrival of more than 25 different relief groups – have quadrupled the population, straining already scarce supplies of water, firewood, and grazing land for animals that the refugees brought with them.
Scores of smaller towns in the area are facing a similar situation, including the market town of Kerfi, which has seen its population triple. The rains have filled riverbeds called wadis that are dry for most of the year, and food aid to Kerfi ran out in July. The next shipment won't get through until next month.
Both displaced Arabs and blacks here in Chad struggle with hunger, and the fear of future attacks.
Before Arabs raided his village last November, Haroun Daout says everyone in his village ate three or four good meals a day, including tomatoes, melons, guavas, and mangos. But now, he says, they eat porridge twice a day in makeshift huts in Kerfi, while Arabs let their animals graze on the crops in his village in Chad, and they cut down all of his fruit trees.
He's one of more than a dozen Chadian village chiefs gathered on a recent day to recount how they had to move their respective villages to this camp in the wake of deadly Arab raids.
Saleh Matar lost 36 people when his village was attacked last fall. "I cannot describe my feelings," he says through clenched teeth. "The men may be able to forgive the Arabs someday, but the women and children can't. When they see Arabs in the marketplace, they feel awful."
"We are afraid the Arabs will attack again," says Mr. Daout. "We want military forces in every locality so we can return to our homes."
But in the seminomadic camps scattered on the edges of towns, Arabs say they are the vulnerable ones. "After last fall's events, the blacks have hate in their hearts," says Mr. Salman.
The Arabs say that the black tribes have formed an alliance to expel them, and that black farmers block their access to water by attacking them and their animals at the wadis.
"If an animal's owner finds his animal dead, he cannot let it pass," says Arab resident Mohammed Abdullahi Adam. "If this problem is not resolved, there will be no peace."
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