CHAD:The refugee camps in eastern Chad are teeming with people displaced by tribal and ethnic violence. Humanitarian organisations, medical providers and peacekeeping troops are overstretched, but for the refugees, life goes on, writes Tom Rowe
FOR YEARS THEY HAVE arrived, walking in their hundreds, carrying everything they own, driven from their villages by attackers they know as Jangaweed. Family members, usually men, were murdered and their homes burned by armed men on horses and camels. Despite coming from villages far apart, all in the camps tell similar stories.
A quarter of a million Chadian and Sudanese refugees now live in makeshift camps scattered throughout eastern Chad, a semi-desert area marked by sandy riverbeds that swiftly fill in the rainy season, making land travel impossible. Temperatures reach 50 degrees. Some camps have populations of up to 30,000, some as little as 500. Most in the region are farmers of Daju ethnicity, the predominant background in Dar Sila province. The camps are often established beside existing towns or villages, creating tension with the original population, who are concerned about the depletion of their scarce resources of water, food, grazing and firewood.
The inhabitants of the camps try to replicate the lives destroyed by the attacks. The survivors from individual villages build their circular wood huts in groups they still call villages, despite all being huddled side by side in a massive conglomeration of huts. One camp called Gassire has 29 "villages", in a location with 10,000 refugees. Each village has a chief, who represents them in dealings with the local townspeople, the charities and organisations working in the region.
The aid agencies have brought changes to the traditional male-dominated structure, taking account of female representatives of the villagers who speak for the women's interests. When asked, the women's concerns are very similar to those of the men - more food, more water, and enough security from attack to allow them to return to their homes, to rebuild their lives and start farming again.
Providing this security is one of the main concerns of the EUfor troops, the Irish contingent of which is based near Goz Beïda, a small dusty town that has become a hub for humanitarians and military personnel due to the large number of camps around it.
Peace and security is a remote ideal in Chad. The conflict in neighbouring Darfur has infected the whole region, in a part of the world where an international border has little meaning and arms and fighters move easily. The clashes began as a Sudanese government reaction to Darfurian demands for equity in resources and representation. Arab tribes were recruited as militias and armed to fight against the black Darfur people. These Arab tribes have exploited traditional rivalries in Chad by arming nomadic Arab herders who wish to gain control of land and resources. Thus the Jangaweed who attack in Chad can be Chadians, or Sudanese who cross the border.
Alongside this conflict are the efforts of both Sudan and Chad to destabilise the other by supporting rebel movements that wish to overthrow their respective governments. Groups that oppose the Sudanese government and its violence in Darfur wait in eastern Chad with full support of the government. We regularly witnessed armed "Justice and Equality Movement" fighters in Chadian towns, a group that recently came close to Khartoum in a failed attack on the Sudanese government. Groups that oppose the Chadian president Idriss Déby, widely regarded as a dictator, hide in the region, receiving arms and vehicles from Sudan. These have been used in attacks on the Chadian capital, coming close to victory only six months ago.
For now, life goes on in the camps. Humanitarian organisations provide some food, sanitation, water and medical treatment. The majority in camps around Goz Beïda are Chadians, so they can work and trade. The Sudanese have refugee status and are restricted in this respect, despite being essentially the same people, in the same situation. The Chadian women gather firewood, using it to cook or selling it in the town, exposing themselves to sexual attack in the trees and scrub around the camps. Men break rocks for building. Children tend herds of sheep and goats which roam freely, even into the town, searching for grass. Weddings take place, with perfume sprayed on visitors, songs and drums and loud processions through the pathways of the camps. In Gourounkoum, children learn the three Rs through French and Arabic in concrete classrooms, six buildings in a camp of 13,000 people. In Goz Beïda, the single hospital in the war-torn region serves 200,000 people with two doctors and space for less than 100 patients. A resolute Italian doctor tells us that no one goes without treatment.
• Chad - Life in the Heart of Africa is an exhibition of photographs by Cavan photographer Hu O'Reilly. It comprises a series of powerful portraits and beautiful landscape images, and is showing at The Backyard, Moynehall, Cavan, until Thursday September 18th. All images are for sale, with proceeds going to Irish aid-agencies working in Chad, namely MSF/ Doctors Without Borders and Concern Worldwide. For more info visit www.chadexhibition.blogspot.com
• Tom Rowe and Hu O'Reilly travelled to Chad with the support of the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund.