Slipping at the Edgses: The Darfur Crisis Expanding

Refugee Rights News
Volume 3, Issue 1
February 2006

In late January 2006, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees addressed the United Nations Security Council on the work of his agency. In those remarks Guterres identified the crisis in Darfur and the refugee movements to Chad as “probably the largest and most complex humanitarian problem on the globe.” As bad as the situation was, however, the High Commissioner warned that thing might get much worse: “if there is no physical protection for those in need of aid, the risk is a much greater calamity than what we have seen so far.”

The space for protection in the region is indeed being eroded. In the two years since the conflict has exploded, millions have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety. The majority have been huddled in camps for the internally displaced which were never quite safe. The camps in Darfur, intended to be a safe haven, have themselves been attacked repeatedly.

And things are getting worse. UNHCR reports that there have been 3,000 new arrivals in Chad since the beginning of 2006, and that one-third of these, approximately a thousand refugees, have in fact fled twice over, having most recently been forced out of internally displaced persons camps in western and southern Darfur.

For those who do manage to cross the border into Chad safety is not guaranteed. Suffering from its own weakness and instability, the Chadian government has recently deployed its security apparatus against internal opposition, leaving large swathes of territory, with refugees and Chadians along it alike, unprotected. As a result, Sudanese-based janjaweed have become increasingly brazen in their attacks, even reportedly striking targets as much as 40 kilometers inside the Chadian border.

This increased insecurity has caused further displacement. Many refugees have moved further inland while an estimated 30,000 Chadians have reportedly fled alongside them.

The attacks in Chad have continued the pattern of ethnic discrimination that has been observed in Darfur, polarizing an environment as ethnically diverse as Darfur itself. As non-Arabs have fled further into Chad to avoid attacks, there has also been movement in the other direction. UNHCR staff in West Darfur has reported that spontaneous camps of eight to ten thousand people, an unknown percentage of whom are Chadian, have grown up recently near the city of El-Geneina. UNHCR has said that it is considering the Chadian as persons of concern pending a fuller assessment of their cases. Many have speculated that this movement is made up of Chadian Arabs fearing retaliatory attacks.

The fear may not be ill-placed. Abandoned by their government, Chadian villagers near the border have reportedly begun to build up their own militias to defend themselves. Meanwhile the governments of Chad and Sudan are trading accusations of supporting one another’s rebels.

The crisis in Darfur is often compared to the genocide in Rwanda, but the situation in Chad is now taking on characteristics of the situation in Zaire. Ethnic tensions are high and diverse groups are arming themselves and greater conflict is brewing. Chadian rebels are seeking to exploit the confusion to push the regime of Idriss Deby from power and are operating, it is claimed, from inside Sudan. Seeking a third term at the helm of a country which Transparency International reported in its Corruption Perceptions Index 2005 was seen as one of the most corrupt in the world, does Idriss Deby resemble Mobutu in Zaire? Might this ethnic violence herald the beginning of another regional war in Africa?