Exhausted, terrified and hungry, and with nowhere to go, the refugees fled by their hundreds of thousands to neighbouring Chad, a largely semi-desert country and Africa’s fifth-largest nation. However, like the Sudan, Chad has suffered from constant internal conflict. Poverty is rife and health and social conditions are inadequate, which is not helped by the influx of the refugees from Darfur. The refugees had a long and arduous journey of days, even weeks, travelling mainly at night to avoid attack. Deaths of their livestock and elderly family members have added to the general state of hopelessness felt by them. Hoping they would be safe once they crossed into Chad, the refugees didn’t find the safe haven they had expected. The area was littered with landmines and other unexploded devices from Chad’s own civil war in the 1970s. In some of the camps, up to 80 per cent of the refugees are children. Their fathers stayed behind to salvage what they could of their belongings or are believed to be dead. Some
of the men joined the rebel forces to try and overcome the militia.
Aid agencies are struggling to provide enough food, water and medical supplies, in what have been described as extremely difficult conditions. Disease is a problem and relief workers fear that the conditions will only get worse with the onset of the seasonal rains. Despite all these problems, the refugees’ main fear is their own safety, because even across the border they are not safe from the ravages of the militia and their own government.
In an effort to protect the refugees from cross-border raids, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, has moved more than 31,000 Sudanese homeless deeper into eastern Chad. The Chadian military are often in conflict with Janjaweed who slip across the border to further harass the refugees and steal their livestock.
In 2005, the Sudanese government and southern-based rebels signed a peace agreement to end their 21-year war. However, despite this agreement, Sudan’s ruling party has failed to undertake the reforms that they promised to help end the human-rights abuses. There are concerns that the Sudanese government only entered into the peace agreement because it has already largely completed its programme of forced displacement. The UN fears that they will continue to manipulate humanitarian aid so that the refugees are forced to stay in the government-sponsored camps and be prevented from returning to their land and homes. Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the Janjaweed militia continued to control much of the rural area, imposing checkpoints and demands for payments on civilians trying to return to their land.
The UN called for an international commission of inquiry to establish the scale of the crimes against humanity in Darfur and the involvement of the Sudanese government in these atrocities. The US government eventually made a declaration of genocide after investigators had recorded the testimonies of over 1,136 refugees and displaced people from Darfur. The atrocities of Darfur have been described as ‘one of the most forgotten and neglected humanitarian cases’.
Until the Sudanese government can feel the pain, not the profit, of its policy of violence and dispossession, it is feared that there will be no incentive to end the killing. There is certainly a definite need for international prosecutions to deter ongoing atrocities in Darfur. With attacks still being reported in the Darfur region, the UN has now authorized 20,000 troops to replace an under-equipped force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. However, the Sudanese government, who has denied any part in the killings or any alliance with the Janjaweed, has refused to allow the peacekeepers into their country. This on-going persecution of the innocent population of Darfur will be a long and difficult problem to solve.
Uganda’s Atrocious War
With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan capturing the media headlines, little attention has been given to the brutal atrocities that have been taking place in Uganda during the past 18 years. Uganda has always been thought of as one of the more successful African nations, and in most respects it is, but perhaps one of its greatest achievements is the fact that it has hidden its bloodthirsty war from the rest of the world for so long. The list of atrocities committed under the name of war is cannibalism, sex slavery, massacre, rape, torture and displacement.
The war in Uganda is a complex one that involves a brutal rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has abducted thousands of children and forced them to become either fighters or sex slaves. The rebels are led by Joseph Kony, whose group has become synonymous with torture, abductions and mass killings. The LRA’s war was with the Ugandan government or the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), whose undisciplined army has also committed crimes against civilians, the very people they are supposed to protect. As the war continues into its 19th year, an estimated 1.9 million Ugandans have been displaced and are still being ignored and unprotected from the abuses they receive at the hands of both the rebel and army forces.
The LRA operates in the north from bases in southern Sudan. It is led by a former Catholic altar boy by the name of Joseph Kony, who seems to believe that his role in life is to cleanse the Acholi people. His army demands that Uganda be ruled according to the Bibical Ten Commandments, and Kony himself uses biblical references to explain why it is necessary to kill his own people. He told one of his captives, ‘If the Acholi don’t support us, they must be finished’. Kony sees himself as a spirit medium and makes up his own rules. He is thought to have as many as 60 wives, as he and his senior commanders take the pick of the girls they abduct. He has created an aura of fear and mysticism that seems to ‘hypnotize’ his rebels into following his strict rules and rituals. One young fighter who escaped from the LRA told a representative of the Humans Rights Watch, ‘When you go to fight you make the sign of the cross first. If you fail to do this, you will be killed.’
The LRA has committed many serious abuses and atrocities, including the abduction, rape, maiming and killing of civilians, including many children. Many of the children and young adults were abducted for training as guerillas. Other children, mainly girls, were sold, traded or given as gifts to arms dealers in Sudan in exchange for weapons. The children were taken to a secret base where they were terrorized into virtual slavery either as guards, concubines or soldiers. They were beaten, raped and forced to march until they were exhausted, and many were compelled to participate in the killing of other children who had tried to escape. The LRA built up their numbers by the abduction of children, and in 1998 alone it is believed as many as 6,000 were taken and used as soldiers.
One young boy reported abuse at the hands of the LRA, when they falsely accused him of joining the government forces. They tied him down and told him not to cry or make any noise. Then a man sat on his chest while others held down his arms and legs. The boy pleaded with the rebels not to kill him, and as he cried one man picked up an axe and chopped off his left hand, then his right. After that he cut off his nose, his ears and his mouth with a knife. The young boy’s ear was sent in a letter warning people against joining the ADF.
Tens of thousands of teenagers who are not prepared to take the risk of being abducted, either sleep out in the bushes or walk into urban centres to sleep in the grounds of hospitals or in the shelter of shop doorways. There is fear, however, that so many children sleeping in one place might be an easy pickings for the rebels.