Darfur's growing insecurity makes life difficult for thousands of displaced
FEATURE STORY: Gillian Sandford/ACT-Caritas
PUBLISHED: January 31, 2006
MANAWASHI, SOUTH DARFUR, SUDAN -- He was on his knees, praying in his shop in a Darfur camp, when the militias on camels and horses came thundering in. “I was afraid. I was afraid of being killed,” said Sher Idriss Ishmael.
He rose from his dusk prayers. “I went to close the shop, but they came in and one of them was shooting and I ran away,” he said.
His wife and children were in the family hut and they fled -- like him -- in a crowd, terrified by the gunshots. But when he and his wife finally met up again, one of their thirteen children was missing.
The couple searched and asked everyone they could find about seven-year-old Adam Idriss -- but no one knew anything.
Tension had been ratcheting tighter over recent days -- both in the town of Mershing and in the eight camps for displaced people that surround it.
Reports of attacks on other camps, and stories of looting and killing were rife. So on Thursday (January 26), when the militia came into the Ton Kittir camp for displaced people -- where Sheik Ishmael lives and keeps his shop -- he simply chose to run.
The Sheik’s wife, Amona Abdullah, was at home in the camp and their 13 children were playing when the militias arrived brandishing weapons and shooting in the air.
Everyone scattered in the chaos. Amona tried to call her children and without stopping to find her husband, she too fled -- along with tens of thousands of others.
The Sheik and his wife were finally reunited after they had trekked in a mass of people for 15 kilometres.
They travelled in the dark, through the bush, until they reached the safety of the nearby town of Manawashi.
Although Manawashi is just eight kilometres south of Mershing, everyone feared to take the direct road, Sheik Ishmael said.
“We arrived at night. I found my wife and all the other children -- but not Adam Idriss,” he said.
And so, despite his fear, he made his way back to Mershing, to try to find his son. “I left here in the morning and in the evening I returned back.”
He travelled with others, who sought to salvage goods from their homes -- before they were looted -- and to bring them back to Manawashi.
On the first two days of looking, he found no trace of Adam Idriss, he said.
Then, on the third day, as he was crossing the Manawashi market, a tiny figure came hurtling toward him.
“The boy saw me first and ran to me. He jumped into my arms and he was crying -- and then I started crying, because he was safe.”
Sheik Ismael and his family are among an estimated 55,000 people who are now in Manawashi.
It is not clear how many children like young Adam Idriss are missing, but on Saturday, Sheiks in Mershing estimated that 210 children were still unaccounted for.
They said 38 women had suffered miscarriages and 13 children, aged 18 months to two years, had died as a result of the displacement -- through exposure on the journey, or by suffocation while travelling, squashed into lorries.
It has proved impossible to confirm these figures or to gain a figure for those killed and injured directly by militia in the attacks that appear designed to drive people out.
Now more than 55,000 people are sleeping in the open, destitute and with dwindling food supplies.
They are terrified to return until the camps and their homes are truly secure. They want a new police force sent to Mershing, to replace the previous one.
And they are calling for regular joint patrols of either African Union peacekeepers with police or United Nations forces with police.
Aid agencies, including the grouping ACT-Caritas (made of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox aid agencies), are assessing the needs of people like Sheik Ismael and moving quickly to help them with the basics, such as blankets, water containers and mats.
In Manawashi, a scene of tragedy is unfolding as families huddle under trees with the possessions they have managed to bring out -- awaiting help from the international community.
Sheik Ishmael is just one of these desperate people. But amidst his trauma and troubles he has at least one comfort: His lost child is found.
