Awatef Adam Mohamed found refuge beyond the penetrable desert border between Sudan and Chad under the scorching sun.
She arrived on June 8 to join tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the pain and agony that war unleashed to Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur.
However, recently, another layer of crisis started pushing people out of Sudan; a vast hunger that is threatening millions.
Since a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted into civil war on April 15, 2023, the two sides have plunged the country into a devastating crisis.
Some 10 million people have been displaced and left destitute – the highest figure in the world – and famine-like conditions continue to cripple the country.
According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the United Nations ’hunger-level scale,' about 756,000 people are facing “catastrophic levels of hunger,” with an additional 25.6 million people facing acute food shortages.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also reported that people are moving, seeking physical safety and enough food to sustain life. More than 600,000 have ended up in Chad, Many are barely surviving, dependent on food aid from the World Food Programme (WFP).
Awataf Mohamad, 27, came to eastern Chad with her five children after fleeing the war-torn region of Darfur in Sudan.
However, a lack of funding has forced the WFP to reduce food assistance thereby cutting refugees’ daily calories by nearly 20 percent over the last two months, according to Vanessa Boi, WFP emergency officer in Chad.
With only 19 percent of WFP’s funding calls met by donor countries and more refugees crossing into Chad daily, the UN agency may have to reduce food assistance to each refugee even further.
Rights groups say the RSF and the army are creating the food crisis in Sudan. The former has looted cities and markets and spoiled harvests by attacking and expelling farmers, while the latter has restricted aid groups from reaching embattled populations in RSF-controlled areas.
In March, the Sudanese army denied permission to aid groups to ship food across the Chadian border to West Darfur, citing security reasons, saying the border has been used to provide weapons to the RSF.
The army later approved food shipments via Tina, Chad, which borders North Darfur, where army and RSF troops are present. But that did not help West Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find food, possibly leading to an uptick of new arrivals into Chad, according to Boi.
The RSF emerged from the government-backed Arab tribal militia known as the “Janjaweed” that fought Khartoum’s war against a rebellion in Darfur. They stand accused of war crimes during the Darfur war, which began in 2003 and officially ended with a peace deal in 2020.
They are again targeting non-Arab communities in Darfur, which they now have almost complete control over. But even Arabs are starting to flee to Chad due to the hunger crisis.
Yassir Hussein, 45, came to Adre from Ardamata Camp in West Darfur, an area where the RSF and allied militias killed some 1,300 Masalit men in October 2023.
“The [RSF] didn’t touch me [in Ardamata] because they could tell I was Arab from my look and my hair,” Yassir tells Al Jazeera, adding that he came to Chad to seek food and adequate shelter.
Adre’s Governor Mohamad Issa fears that the arrival of Sudanese Arabs could cause the Darfur conflict to spill over into Chad. He stressed that more humanitarian support is needed for all refugees – including poor Chadian communities – to mitigate ethnic conflict.
“There is a possibility that some conflicts between the Arabs and Masalit might cross the border. We now have some Arab refugees fleeing the famine [in Sudan] and this could lead to tensions,” Issa told Al Jazeera.
Yassir hopes the conflict won’t follow him into Chad. He said he has “no problems” with the non-Arab Masalit and that he just wants the war to stop. “There is no difference between us,” he told Al Jazeera. “We’re all the same in front of God.”
Source:
https://www.aljazeera.com/ Image:
https://www.africanews.com/
