Janjaweed expands conflct, genocide into Chad

[mburbank]

This is where we are needed. This is where we might do some actual good against 'evil doers'.

MABRUKA, Chad (Reuters) - Sheltering from the sun under a thorn tree, Fatime Tabil bows her head as she recalls how Sudanese Arab militia killed her husband -- a victim of the Darfur conflict now spilling into eastern Chad.
ADVERTISEMENT

Tabil and some 350 other Chadian villagers fled deeper into the arid central African country when their settlement at Koumou, near the Sudanese border, was attacked by fighters they identified as "Janjaweed."

"The Arabs attacked us to steal our cattle. They killed many villagers so we fled," said 25-year-old Tabil, her head covered with a mauve scarf, surrounded by a dozen women.

"My husband was killed when he pursued them ... now I am left alone with our five children," she said. "They came to our homes and took everything we had. Of course I am angry."

The feared Arab Janjaweed militia, whose name is loosely derived from the Arabic for "devils on horseback," are blamed for a three-year campaign of rape, looting and murder in Sudan's Darfur region that has killed 250,000 people and forced more than 2 million from their homes.

Chadian President Idriss Deby accuses Sudan's government of exporting Darfur's ethnic strife across the border in a drive to spread Arab control and Islam into sub-Saharan Africa.

Militia attacks deeper and deeper into Chad in the last six months have forced more than 55,000 terrified locals from their homes and threatened camps housing more than 200,000 Darfur refugees,
United Nations officials say.

"There has been cattle rustling along the border for a long time," said Claire Bourgeois, head of the United Nation's refugee agency (UNHCR) in eastern Chad.

"But the Janjaweed continue to advance further into Chad, causing a second wave of displacement, making it difficult to distribute aid and guarantee the security at the camps. ... We need more help."

Tabil and her companions live precariously in woven-grass shelters lent against trees in a dry river bed near the village of Koukou, some 60 km (36 miles) from their former homes.

They eke out a living by selling grass mats at a nearby camp sheltering 17,000 Darfur refugees. The growing numbers of displaced people are putting even greater strain on the already stretched resources of desolate eastern Chad.

Water, firewood and food are all scarce.